Sabino Canyon Recreation Area
Canyon · Tucson & the Sky Islands
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Sabino Canyon Recreation Area lies in the Santa Catalina Mountains, where Depression-era CCC and WPA crews built the tram road, nine bridges over Sabino Creek, and the Sabino Dam in the 1930s. Private vehicles have been barred from the canyon since 1978, replaced by a narrated shuttle. For cyclists, the paved tram road is open before 9am and after 5pm every day except Wednesday and Saturday, a rare car-free 3.5-mile ride into the canyon.
The tram road was originally meant to climb all the way to Mount Lemmon, but the terrain won: crews stopped several miles short, leaving the paved grade riders use today unfinished by design. Streamside growth gives way to open desert slope along the canyon, home to deer, javelina, and the occasional mountain lion. A 2006 summer flood tore out one of the WPA-era creek bridges, a reminder of how fast Southwest monsoons can hit. The nonprofit Friends of Sabino Canyon has funded trail and bridge repairs since 1993, work that keeps the crossings usable after storms like that one. The canyon now draws over a million visitors a year, one of the most visited recreation areas in the Coronado National Forest.
What you see
Sabino Creek's perennial pools and low waterfalls sit against steep canyon walls and open desert slope, a rare year-round water feature in the Sonoran Desert foothills.
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