Brown's Ranch Reopened With a New Plaza Built to Spread Out the Morning Crowd

Brown's Ranch Trailhead at 30301 N. Alma School Parkway reopened on Oct. 30 after a summer of construction. The City of Scottsdale's project page lists a $1,165,599 budget paid for by the 2004 Preservation Sales Tax, and a Nov. 3 report from TodoMountainBike says construction began July 13. The Preserve's main page lists the results: a new trail dispersal area, five rerouted trails, a resurfaced equestrian lot, better pedestrian connections and upgrades to aging infrastructure.

The parking lot stayed the same size. City staff told the Preserve Commission in June that stalls would get bigger and the lot would not grow. So the $1.17 million went into what happens after you park. The plaza and the reroutes are the city's answer to congestion at the trailhead, and they only work on the people who already got a space.

The Problem the City Set Out to Fix

The project was never designed around adding capacity. At the commission's June 4 meeting, Preserve Director Jenna Kohl said the goal was to reduce congestion where people get onto the trails. The plan had three parts: a new trail dispersal plaza, catching up on maintenance and making the parking lot work better. The city's written objectives say the same thing in planning language:

• Parking lot: a refined design for better durability, drainage and circulation
• Trailhead building: new lighting and roofing for comfort and safety
• Trail access: a new dispersal area, with five trail segments rerouted to reduce congestion and protect sensitive areas

The last item is the one you'll notice on your first morning back. A dispersal plaza gives hikers, mountain bikers and riders on horseback more than one way into the trail system, so they aren't all squeezing through the same opening. Five segments were rerouted to make that work. A loop you've walked for years may now start somewhere else, and the posted signage at the trailhead is the reference to use.

Why the Lot Stayed the Same Size

The parking decision follows from what the Preserve is for. The approved June 4 Preserve Commission minutes record a commissioner reminding the room that the city's first duty is to protect the Preserve, not to improve the user experience. She noted that the Preserve Ordinance and the City Charter both put protection of the natural asset first and allow only appropriate access. She also said the founders worried about overuse and thought trails should close when they reached capacity. Her summary: "it is a Preserve, not a park." Commissioner Wenstrom raised a concern about setting a precedent with the project.

The project the city built fits those limits. It moves people through the trailhead more smoothly without inviting more of them. The McDowell Sonoran Preserve covers more than 30,500 acres and over 230 miles of multi-use trails. Brown's Ranch is one of its main northern entrances, and the number of cars that fit there is the same as before July.

The same minutes include a detail about the equestrian lot. Assistant Fire Chief Steeves told the commission that Brown's Ranch has two helicopter landing options, the equestrian parking lot and the cul-de-sac, depending on the operation. The city's trailhead listing describes it with horse-trailer parking, hitching rails and a water trough.

What the Summer Detour Showed

During construction, the city closed the trailhead and its parking lot, banned parking on nearby streets and in neighborhoods, and sent visitors to four other trailheads. If you spent July through October using one of them, you already know what Brown's Ranch offers that some of them don't.

Brown's Ranch has restrooms, shade ramadas and water. The city's Preserve page tells visitors to bring plenty of water for themselves and their dogs and to turn around when half of it is gone. Among the alternatives, Pima-Dynamite is the one where the city lists water, restrooms and shade ramadas, which makes it the obvious backup on a day when Brown's Ranch is full.

The street-parking ban was a construction-closure rule on a page last updated Aug. 5, so treat it as part of the summer detour. With the lot no bigger than before, having a second trailhead in mind still makes sense.

The Hours Shrink Through November

The Preserve's hours follow the sun, and this time of year the window gets shorter each week. The city's Preserve hours page lists Nov. 1 access as 6:17 a.m. to 5:35 p.m. and Nov. 15 as 6:30 a.m. to 5:25 p.m. Across the Preserve, gates open about 30 minutes before sunrise. In mid-November, that means the first cars pull in around 6:30, and an after-work outing has a little over an hour of daylight once you account for the drive.

For mountain bikers, the trail changes came with no rule changes. The same TodoMountainBike report noted that electric mountain bikes are still prohibited on McDowell Sonoran Preserve trails, along with electric scooters and other motorized recreational devices, with exceptions only for approved accessibility accommodations.

Learn the New Layout With a Guide

One of the simplest ways to learn the new routes is to walk them with the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy, which posts its guided programs on its event calendar and asks participants to sign up there. The Sonoran Desert Discovery walk on the Nov. 7 calendar was listed as free, with limited space and an RSVP required. Check each listing for its own terms. The Conservancy's Brown's Ranch Trailhead page lists these programs into early December:

Two of these programs connect to the trailhead's name. The Brown's Ranch Homestead hike on Nov. 14 and "Brown's Ranch: The Real Story" on Nov. 17 are both on the calendar for the first weeks after the reopening. Trailside Bike Repair Basics on Nov. 22 is the one aimed at riders and the longest program on the list at three hours. Most of these start at 9 a.m., which is two and a half hours after the gates open on a mid-November morning, when early users of the same lot may already be filling it.

The questions we get from north Scottsdale homeowners often come back to the Preserve: how close to a trailhead, which trailhead and how the access works day to day. If you're curious how being near Brown's Ranch shows up in your home's value, Birk Realtors can pull the nearby sales and walk you through them. Get Your Free Home Valuation.