Cave Creek
Thirty-seven square miles and less than 5,000 people.
Cave Creek covers 37.71 square miles and holds 4,892 people. Carefree, on its eastern boundary, covers 8.8 and holds 3,690. That is four times the ground, about twelve hundred more residents, and roughly 130 people to the square mile against 419 next door. Cave Creek Road runs north out of the Valley and climbs the whole way, gradually enough that most people miss it until the saguaros thicken and the frontage thins. Cave Creek Regional Park, on the town’s western side, runs from 2,000 feet at its low end to 3,060 at its high. The county calls the ground in both of its parks up here upper Sonoran Desert.
The setting
Spur Cross Ranch Conservation, 2,154 acres, is Maricopa County. Cave Creek Regional Park, 2,922 acres, is Maricopa County as well. North and east of both, the Tonto National Forest carries on toward the Rim across just under three million acres. Spur Cross exists because three governments bought the land. The State of Arizona, Maricopa County and the Town of Cave Creek put together the 2001 partnership that established it, and the town of 4,892 people is one of the three parties. Cave Creek itself runs through that ground as a perennial stream, which the county calls rare in this desert, and it carries a riparian corridor of mesquite, cottonwood and willow. The stream gives the town its name. Going south the protected ground gives out well before the Valley does, and the land between the town line and the north edge of Phoenix is private and platted. The two county holdings are joined on the ground. A 10.8-mile segment of the Maricopa Trail runs from the nature center at Cave Creek Regional Park to Spur Cross. The Maricopa Trail is 315 miles end to end and links nine county parks, a city park and the national forest, and it is open to hikers, cyclists and riders alike. Spur Cross Road leaves the town core, gives up its pavement, and ends at a trailhead. From there the trail runs on into Spur Cross and toward the forest. You drive to the trailhead. Turn the other way and Black Mountain stands over the eastern side of town, dark and blunt, and visible from most of the town. The summit sits inside Carefree.
The homes
The town was settled in the 1870s and did not incorporate until 1986, two years after Carefree and more than a century after the first cabins, so the zoning ratified a pattern that was already on the ground. Lot size here follows terrain and access, and a zoning class is a poor guide to what is standing on the parcel.
Lifestyle
Horses are ordinary here in a way they are not in the towns to the south. Keeping large animals on a residential parcel runs through the Private Ranch use, which requires at least 2 contiguous acres and a qualifying use behind it: boarding, breeding, training or lessons, sale of ranch animals, or 4-H. Meet the test and the counts scale, five large animals per acre for the first 5 acres and two per acre after that. Fail it and the parcel is limited to small animals. On public roads Arizona law requires a driver to slow for horses and to stop when a rider signals, until the animals are under control. Some trail segments cross Arizona State Trust Land, which asks for its own $15 recreational permit before you ride there. Riders from the towns nearby trailer in to use those trails. The same ground carries walkers and cyclists, and the Go John Trail loops a mountain inside Cave Creek Regional Park with 2,922 acres of county conservation land underneath. Cave Creek Rodeo Days runs three days of PRCA rodeo in late March and reaches its fiftieth year in 2027. The core along Cave Creek Road is still saloons, patios and single operators.
Who it fits
Houses here answer to their owners and not to a design review board. That is the appeal for some buyers and the disqualifier for others. Census figures put more than four in ten residents at 65 and over, and owner occupancy near 95 percent. It fits the buyer who wants space, quiet and the right to keep animals. Cave Creek is not a rung above or below Carefree; it is a different purchase. It also fits the person who assumed they already knew what desert living looks like. Most of what is south of here was drawn on a plan first and built afterward. Cave Creek was built first. If Cave Creek has been on your mind, whether you are looking here or thinking about selling here, I would be glad to begin a quiet conversation.
