Tonto Forest rec area cleaned up but closed

Apr. 28—As State Route 88 passes a "Welcome to Apache Junction" sign and nears the Superstition Mountain-Lost Dutchman Museum, a rural road splits off the highway and heads toward a rock formation called Saddle Rock.

The dirt road cuts through about 1,000 acres of federal Bureau of Land Management land before entering Tonto National Forest.

In January, dozens of campsites lined this road, many of them long-term living quarters in violation of BLM's camping rules.

With the opioid epidemic and high housing costs exacerbating area homelessness, there has been increasing pressure on public lands from people living full-time on the land. Accumulations of trash and possessions around the campsites defined the desert on the edge of Apache Junction.

Locals feared increased wildfire risk and other safety issues. They complained that trash, sewage and drug paraphernalia made the area inhospitable to recreation on the network of informal trails created over the years.

Last week, the area looked different than it did in January.

Following a February closure and cleanup, the campsites are gone, unofficial roads and clearings are blocked and tons of trash have been hauled away. The road is open to thru-traffic, but signs everywhere announce to drivers that the area is temporarily closed to all uses.

Eventually, the 1,000 acres of BLM land that had become notorious as a site of long-term camping will reopen to the public as the Goldfield Recreation Area with new infrastructure to accommodate day use recreation.

The agency said earlier this year that the temporary closure of Goldfield could last up to two years, but Thomas said BLM hopes to reopen it sooner than that.

"This site is just an incredible story," said BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning, standing in a clearing ringed with jumping cholla near the road that was formerly a hot-spot for long-term camping.

To get there, she and several lieutenants climbed a berm of dirt installed by the agency to prevent vehicle access.

Stone-Manning oversees 245 million acres of federal land in the U.S., including 12 million acres in Arizona, concentrated mostly in western Arizona. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to lead the agency in 2021.

"The community was rightly concerned" with the illegal camping, she said. "People are welcome to camp on our lands, but it's only for 14 days."

She said the federal agency is reclaiming this swath of desert with a million-dollar view of the Superstitions to be "a place that is safe and open to all."

"The team here in the Phoenix district worked really closely with the community and worked very closely with the people who were living on this landscape," Stone-Manning said.

Officials were quick to emphasize that the agency was able to move people off the land in a compassionate way.

"We had a team of eight daily out here working with the community out here to ensure they had the services they needed," Phoenix District Manager Leon Thomas said. "I think that was really the secret sauce."

The local Bureau of Land Management office invested about $175,000 to close the area and haul away trash and abandoned vehicles. It plans to spend another $200,000 to build two trailheads with equestrian facilities and a network on non-motorized trails.

The money for this recreation project, officials say, came from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and Inflation Reduction Act. The two bills earmarked a combined $41 million for recreation and conservation projects on BLM land in Arizona.

According to BLM's website, the agency's mission is to manage the land for multiple uses, including energy development, livestock grazing and timber harvesting.

"One of those growing uses is recreation," Stone-Manning said.

"People have not seen us as a recreation agency in the past," the BLM chief said.

But Americans are exploring these public lands in growing numbers. She said the number of annual visitors to public lands in Arizona has grown 20% in recent years, from 5 to 6 million.

"That's terrific. People discovered the public lands or rediscovered them, perhaps during the pandemic, and they're not going back," she said. "It's our job to ensure that when they're out here, they have a real quality experience, and that future generations when they're out here have that same quality experience."

The BLM chief ended up in Apache Junction last week as part of a national tour of recreation projects funded with money from the two federal stimulus bills.

On the eve of February closure and clean up, some neighbors feared unintended consequences from BLM land closure. They worried that it might drive long-term campers into surrounding national forest and state trust land close to their homes.

Tonto National Forest officials said they were taking measures to mitigate this possibility and would monitor the situation.

Colleen Campos, who lives near the Goldfield Recreation Area next to national forest land, said she's seen an improvement since the start of the year.

After BLM's closure, Tonto National Forest law enforcement were finally able to remove to long-time campsites on national forest land.

Campos said with those sites gone, other people "don't feel it's OK" to camp illegally.

Thomas attributed the successful management so far to collaboration.

"Not only do we have our BLM rangers, we also have Pinal County Sheriff's Office, Apache Junction Police Department — they all came together, they met regularly, spoke regularly. It was a coordinated effort to manage this area," he said.