Boston Mill and the San Pedro River

One must hike to the old Boston Mill. There are no paved roads to take you to this isolated location near the San Pedro River. It's on BLM land that sees few daily visitors.

The Boston and Arizona Mining company built a mill to process silver and gold ore they mined from Tombstone's Emerald Gulch and the Grodon Mine, located in the Dragoon Mountains. This was one of five mills along the river. It was active from 1879 to 1887. All that remains today are the rock walls (reinforced in part with cement), some rusty equipment scattered in the nearby desert, and sun-bleached railroad ties. It's 4.3 miles from Charleston Road and requires a hike on the old road to get to. The old road is now badly eroded and reclaimed by the earth, but one can walk partly through a sandy wash, or walk along the abandoned railroad to get to this mill. Either way gets strenuous in 80F heat.

I last did this hike with Kevin in 2005 or so, with both Sara and Sammy. Susan led that hike. It's still well-marked with metal signs, but best done in cooler weather and overcast skies.

SteveA hosted this hike through the hiking club and SVH meetup group. Twenty people showed up, including SusanM and Little Steve, whom I don't see much of these days. Little Steve has been hibernating more in Quarzite and Yuma these days, and winters in Quemodo, NM in the summer. I took Sadie and Zeke with me, both who were leashed the first mile. Once off-leash, they stayed right behind me, perhaps because my body provided some shade, or perhaps because they knew I had treats for them in my backpack. They never got away from me, which impressed others. "What good hiking dogs!" said a few. Only one curmudgeon implied he wasn't happy with the dogs offleash.

We started at 8:30pm from the BLM parking lot off Charleston Road. We had quite a few vehicles taking over the parking lot. I drove separately, as I stopped at the recycling center before coming to the hike, and getting to the recycling center from our house is more direct than meeting in town at the Fry's parking lot. I arrived at the lot before the majority of the hikers.

It promised to be a warm day, but it got hot for us as the heat radiated back from the sand and later the railroad rocks. SteveA had planned this hike hoping for cool weather, but today was warmer than normal. We all got exhausted fast. We started out as a long line meandering up the San Pedro Trail, a singletrack that meanders around barren hills near the river. An hour into the hike, I could tell that both dogs were getting exhausted from the heat, and I used what little shade we could find from mature scrub oaks for a few rest areas. The group quickly broke off into two, then three separate groups. SteveA lost control of this group visually, but kept in radio contact with the gazelles: JimA, Joe, Barry and SusanM. I stayed in the middle.

This hike may not be the most scenic hike, as JeffP said, but it is full of history. A pile of rocks with ancient petroglyphs is along this trail, secured by prickly shrubs now growing around it. I stayed off the rocks to keep the dogs off the warm rocks, and then meandered northward to Boston Mills, still another two miles away through an oak-studded floodplain and dead meadow grasses. By now even I felt exhausted by the heat. The river was hidden from view, but the budding cottonwoods were nearby. Even Sadie wanted to run off and dive into the water.

The group overall spend a lot of time at the mill. The ruins are impressive. People climbed them, explored them, and sat on the upper level and ate lunch there. I kept my dogs off the rock wall and instead took them to the shady river nearby and gave them their dehydrated turkey treats (something I got from Amazon and which came in very handy). This, I'm sure, was what the dogs wanted and needed and I was willing to stay here for a while. A few other hikers stayed in some oak shade while others explored the old mill.

The group of 20 now was broken up into even smaller groups as we headed back. SteveA wanted to walk the river going back, something I was interested as well. I even wanted to test my waterproof Keens I recently bought. But water in parts was over a food deep and wading quickly proved slow. SusanM was with me and we did walk along the river until I opted to get back up to the railroad to make sure we wouldn't be too far behind. It turned out to be a silly fear, as we ended up arriving back at the parking lot with the first hikers, who all left in their cars as soon as possible. We all looked exhausted.

I stayed with SusanM the entire return hike. She is such an explorer, and it's hard to see her as a 68-year-old. She has so much spunk! We met up again with Rod, Nina, and another woman on our return hike as we moaned and groaned along the railroad bed. I took Susan down to the river near the graffiti-lined bridge to show her where I like to take the dogs to on hot summer days, but then we got back up to the railroad bed to finish our hike. It was 1pm.

The last people to return to their cars were Gina and SteveA, who surely walked back the entire way via the river. I would have joined them, but today the heat was just too much for me. What happened to our predicted cool, wet winter thanks to El Nino? We haven't had precipitation since early January and our desert is starting to dry up. At this rate, we could be facing severe fire conditions by April again.

Instead of sipping on hot lemon tea upon my return, I was drinking cold lemon shandy.