Deer Creek Hike

Today the Payson Packer C Group went hiking about 14 miles south of Payson to a community called Deer Creek. We pulled off the highway at the Deer Creek community exit and immediately turned onto a dirt road to the right. Past the barbed wire fence, we pulled off to the side and parked, 5 cars in total, about 19 hikers.

We unloaded, got our packs on and trudged off into the desert, along the left side of the community, following a jeep track to the north and east. The area is relatively flat through here so the hiking was pretty easy.

After only about 1.4 miles, we reached our destination, an old indian ruin. This area has not been excavated or really explored by archeologists but there are several fairly big rooms, all of the walls fallen in of course. Storage rooms are also visible. Pottery shards litter the ground all over the site. Moving to the east we came to a relatively large room with walls intact up to about 3 feet. It appeared to be built into a mound but that may only be centuries of dirt built up. The room was at the edge of a small mesa, the entire village is on. It's doorway looked out over the creek (Deer Creek) flood plain. It would have had an excellent view of the farm fields the village would have had there beside the creek.

After wandering around the site for awhile, we headed off to the north again. We went about 1/2 mile or so and had our lunch in a cattle corral. The corral had a permanent metal water tank, about 4 1/2 feet high and 20 feet across. It also had a windmill to pump water into a permanent water trough. The little area was grassy and nice. We lingered there in the nice sunshine for 20 minutes or more before packing ourselves up and heading back to the cars.

Overall, a very pleasant hike.