Fossil Springs

Fossil Creek is fed by springs that discharge on the order of tens of thousands of gallons a minute, an enormous, unwavering flow of about seventy-degree water rising from deep beneath the Mogollon Rim. What makes it extraordinary is what the water carries. It is loaded with dissolved calcium carbonate, and as it flows and the mineral settles out, it coats everything in a pale stone crust and builds low dams and terraces across the creek.

Those natural dams pond the water into a chain of pools and small waterfalls, and the mineral gives the water its famous milky turquoise color. The mineral crust is what gave the place its name: everything the water touches slowly turns to stone, as if fossilized. Below the falls the pools run deep and cool, and in the heat of an Arizona summer they are a genuine oasis.

This is the story most visitors never hear. Beginning in 1909, nearly the entire flow of Fossil Creek was captured and diverted through flumes to run the Childs and Irving hydroelectric plants, among the earliest power stations in Arizona. For almost a hundred years the creek bed below the diversion was left largely dry, its famous water sent off to spin turbines instead.

Then in 2005 the utility decommissioned the old plants and returned the full natural flow to the creek. It was the first time a desert stream in the Southwest had been restored to its natural flow, and only the second dam in the entire country taken out for environmental reasons alone. Part of the old diversion dam was removed a few years later, with a piece left in place on purpose to block invasive fish from moving upstream.

The recovery was fast and remarkable. Within a few years the travertine was rebuilding, greenery returned along the banks, and native Arizona fish, once nearly gone, reclaimed the spring-fed reach as a stronghold. In 2009 Congress protected roughly sixteen miles of it as a Wild and Scenic River, one of only two in Arizona. What looks like untouched wilderness is really a landscape brought back from the edge.

The classic way in is the Fossil Springs Trail, also called the Bob Bear Trail, and it is not an easy walk. It runs about four miles each way, and the trick is that you hike downhill to the water first and then have to climb roughly 1,500 feet back out at the end, mostly over rocky ground with little shade. In summer heat, that return climb is the real challenge, and it catches unprepared hikers out every year.

So come ready. Carry far more water than you think you need, start early, and know your limits. The water hides hazards too: sudden drop-offs, deep pools, slick travertine, and swirling currents near the falls, with no signs to warn you. It is a wild place, not a maintained swimming park.

And it takes planning to even reach the trailhead. During the warm season a permit is required to park and visit, reserved ahead of time online, and the access is a long, unpaved forest road that can close in bad weather. Do the homework first, and Fossil Springs pays it all back with a turquoise creek few people ever see.

The trailhead sits off a long forest road near the mountain towns of Pine and Strawberry, up at around six thousand feet where the air is cooler than the desert below. Those little towns, along with Payson to the south, are the closest places to fuel up, grab a meal, and sleep, and they make a fine cool-weather base for the whole Mogollon Rim.

Plan a full day, treat the permit and the road conditions as non-negotiable, and respect both the heat and the water. Fossil Springs rewards the effort like few places in Arizona: a clear, blue, spring-fed creek in a protected wilderness, quietly thriving again after nearly a century of running dry.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.