San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area

Another great hiking spot found! Its close to town and yet you still get the feeling that you are secluded into the wild. Peaceful and relaxing. The walk was an easy pretty flat walk. Great for families and all! Lots of birds to see too!

Fave spot for Plein Air paintings. Also for humming bird banding in summer. A treasure for southern Arizona.

One of my favorite places in the area. Nice little visitor center, friendly and informative staff, and an amazingly large old cottonwood. Perfect for little day walk, or casual birding.

Nice place to go for a relaxing flat walk. Not extreme at all and you can take your kids. I saw a couple snakes and there’s a lot of birds (if you are a bird watcher you’ll enjoy it). Bring water and long pants, come trails are not clean and you’ll be scratched by the plants.

If you’re looking for a challenge or something extreme, this is not the place. It’s an intermediate flat stroll with cool views of the dried up river and trees, good for black and white pictures. Not a bird fan but the people who are bird watching are enjoying themselves. It’s a great place to get out off the house and to stay active.

Excellent day Destination!!! I’ve hiked there many many times. If you are a Birdwatcher. It’s Heaven on Earth! The birds fly between the Environmental Park and a pond a short distance South. I actually drew a Panorama of a day trip with best Friend and the four Children we raised together!!! In fact before it was made a National Riparian Area. We often in the 46 years in the area partied and went muddin and Four Wheeling almost every weekend! In Fact I bought 3 Kegs for my Sweet Sixteen Party!!! We ended up loading the kegs discreetly in a Four Wheeler and selected who was joining us. Took off and went up K2 four wheelers only can conquer that Hill!!! We had a blast!!! I’ll never forget that one. Footnote on the way to the River on the Left is The Environmental Park. Sign with Binoculars on rt. if you pass the animal shelter. You just missed it!!! Final Fact!!! It’s the only River that runs its Complete length from South to North on this Continent. After a 100 year Earthquake it started in the 1800s to flow underground. Gone was Charleston and the silver mines flooded. That’s when Tombstone went Tourist. It’s fun and truly Haunted! Just south is Bisbee in the Canyon. Also the Famous Brewery Gulch! If a lady starts hangin out there. She becomes a «Girl Gone Gulch!» Last note: Excellent Coffee and Chat at «Bisbee Roasters» Sincerely Anita Kolen Hancock
Sierra Vista, AZ

Nice area for nature, trail walks, and bird watching. The area I walked seemed it would be too hot during summer months unless you start super early as there wasn’t a lot of shade on a couple long stretches. There is a store that provides informational packets and offers books one can purchase that reference the area, or written by authors from the area.

Easy walking trails… Great for experiencing nature. Good spot for photography. Only about 10 minutes from sierra vista down hwy 90. I would recommend if you have younger children or you don’t want a hard hike.

I love this spot –just walking from the lot to the trickle they call a river! All jokes aside its a great little known spot!

How can nature not be awesome?
This was a really great time, I donated to the house, since there are really no charges for just visiting and walking through. The trees, whether at night or day time, are beautiful, and they are huge!
It was a good time for the family, had a lot of things to learn about, wouldn’t mind camping there either!

Though wildlife habitat in the San Pedro River Valley is rapidly disappearing under the blades of bulldozers, some of the most diverse and important areas have been set aside for future generations. The San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, owned and managed by the Bureau of Land Management, may be one of binding’s best kept secrets.
Designated a Globally Important Bird Area in 1996 by the American Bird Conservancy, this 56,000-acre preserve along the upper San Pedro River is home to over 100 species of breeding birds and provides invaluable habitat for over 250 species of migrant and wintering birds. A narrow ribbon of Fremont Cottonwoods, some over 100 years old, supports forty percent of the nesting Gray Hawks in the U.S. and creates a migratory corridor for an estimated 4 million migrating birds each year.
The primary access point to the National Conservation Area is at the San Pedro House, 7 miles east of the Hwy 92/​Fry Blvd. intersection in Sierra Vista, where volunteers from the Friends of the San Pedro River provide visitor information and sell books, gifts and beverages.
Our recent early-​October visit yielded:
Abert’s Towhee (Melozone aberti) 3
Anna’s Hummingbird (Calypte anna) 2
Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) 12
Bewick’s Wren (Thryomanes bewickii) 1
Black Phoebe (Sayornis nigricans) 1
Black-​chinned Hummingbird (Archilochus alexandri) 4
Broad-​billed Hummingbird (Cynanthus latirostris) 1
Canyon Towhee (Melozone fusca) 2
Cassin’s Kingbird (Tyrannus vociferans) 12
Common Ground-​Dove (Columbina passerina) 15
Cooper’s Hawk (Accipiter cooperii) 1
Curve-​billed Thrasher (Toxostoma curvirostre) 5
European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) 6
Gila Woodpecker (Melanerpes uropygialis) 10
Green-​tailed Towhee (Pipilo chlorurus) 3
Harris’s Hawk (Parabuteo unicinctus) 1
Hooded Oriole (Icterus cucullatus) 1
House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) 12
Inca Dove (Columbina inca) 1
Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus) 1
Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) 4
Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) 8
Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) 1
Northern Harrier (Circus cyaneus) 1
Pyrrhuloxia (Cardinalis sinuatus) 6
Red-​tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) 2
Say’s Phoebe (Sayornis saya) 3
Vermilion Flycatcher (Pyrocephalus rubinus) 8
Western Kingbird (Tyrannus verticalis) 17
White-​crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys) 18
White-​winged Dove (Zenaida asiatica) 3