Mogollon Rim

Geologically the Rim is a doorway into deep time. Its cliffs are capped by pale Coconino sandstone and Kaibab limestone, the same rock layers that form the rim of the Grand Canyon far to the north. The sandstone preserves a vast dune desert that covered this ground some 275 million years ago, and the limestone above it records a shallow inland sea that flooded the region and then vanished around 250 million years ago.

The escarpment itself has been taking shape for tens of millions of years as the Colorado Plateau rose and its southern edge eroded back. The result is a long, ragged step in the land where the high, cool plateau ends abruptly and the terrain drops toward the warmer basins below, a boundary you can literally stand on and see.

One of the Rim's quiet wonders is the forest it carries. The plateau top holds the largest continuous belt of Ponderosa pine anywhere on Earth, a sweep of tall, orange-barked trees that follows the escarpment across Arizona and into New Mexico. Walk among them on a warm day and the bark gives off a faint smell of vanilla or butterscotch, one of the small delights that keep people coming back.

That forest, and the elevation of roughly 7,000 feet, is why the little towns below the Rim fill up every summer. When Phoenix bakes, Pine, Strawberry, and Christopher Creek stay cool and green, and the Rim becomes a refuge of shade, small lakes, and pine-scented air. Hidden reservoirs like Bear Canyon and Knoll lakes dot the rim top, reached by the old road that runs along the edge.

The Rim is soaked in Western history. In the early 1870s the Army, under General George Crook, built a supply and patrol road that ran two hundred miles from Fort Whipple across the top of the Rim to Fort Apache, used through the long Apache campaigns. Much of that route survives today as the Rim Road, Forest Road 300, which traces the very edge of the escarpment past overlook after overlook.

Not far along it, at a fork of East Clear Creek in 1882, the Battle of Big Dry Wash was fought, one of the last major clashes of the Apache wars in Arizona, and a monument and the old General Springs cabin mark the ground. A generation later the novelist Zane Grey built a hunting cabin below the Rim and set many of his most famous Westerns in this exact country, so the landscape you drive through is the one that shaped a whole genre of frontier fiction.

The easiest way to reach the rim edge near Pine and Strawberry is from State Route 260 or Highway 87, where forest roads climb to the top and the scenic Rim Road, Forest Road 300, runs for about 35 miles along the escarpment past lakes and overlooks before rejoining pavement. The Rim Road is unpaved and best driven in dry weather with good clearance, and it is generally closed by snow in winter.

This is genuine high country, cool and prone to sudden afternoon storms in summer, so carry water, food, and layers, top off your gas in town first, and mind any fire restrictions in this dry pine forest. Give yourself at least half a day to drive the rim, stop at the overlooks, and let the sheer scale of the view sink in, and longer if you want to fish a hidden lake or hike down one of the trails that drop off the edge.

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