If you are planning a trip up to the Payson area, you might want to work a visit to Tonto Natural Bridge State Park into your itinerary. It’s about half an hour north west of Payson off the 87 and it is beautiful!
The park is not very large, and none of the trails are long, so that makes it a nice morning or afternoon outing that won’t take up your whole day. Unless, of course, you want to take it nice and slow, simply relaxing, picnicking, and enjoying some down time watching the animals, the water and the other adventurers coming through!
The big draw at this state park is the natural bridge which is made of travertine rock (and is more like a tunnel). There are trails that lead to either entrance of the tunnel and, if you feel like rock climbing, you can actually loop through the tunnel. Use the Anna Mae trail to go down, keep to your right as you go through the first part of the tunnel, and then head to the nicely built observation platform and Gowan Trail to get back up to where you started.
If you do choose to go through, make sure to have good shoes on and that you are nimble enough to climb, slide and maneuver your way across smooth large rocks. Kids who are young, or not used to rock scrambling, will need help. It’s nice and cool in the tunnel and there’s water dripping through the porous travertine so it’s pretty fun just to go in from one side and enjoy that, without even needing to do the loop through. You can also play in the creek, downstream of the lower observation deck.
When you are not exploring the tunnel, there are other things to check out while you are there. They have upper viewpoint spots, the most scenic being 1 and 3, that give you birds eye views of the bridge/tunnel. There are picnic tables scattered around on grassy areas. All of them make perfect spots for snacks or lunch.
Animals are all over the place so keep an eye out! Birds, snakes, butterflies, javelinas, deer - they all seem to have found a way to co-exist with people in this pretty little valley. Near the entrance booth is a small gift shop and nature center that’s worth a visit when you first arrive so the rangers inside can give you helpful park info.
Some details to help you plan your visit:
- Website:https://azstateparks.com/tonto
- This park closes at 5 pm so plan to arrive by 2 pm in order to have enough time to explore it.
- The road to get into the valley is fully paved but very steep. Just FYI so you are not surprised.
- There is a fee to enter the park. $10 for adults, $5 for kids, 6 and under free.
- There’s one set of flush toilets close to the entrance and then other well maintained pit style toilets closer to the bridge and trails.
- Shortly after this article was made available, a local TV station did a piece on the park too! To watch it look for the Pine & Strawberry episode of What's in a name, Arizona? : https://www.fox10phoenix.com/shows/whats-in-a-name-arizona
It’s such a beautiful little valley with greenery, water, mountain air, swifts swooping all over the place, and a unique geological feature. We are lucky it was made into a State Park so it’s there for all of us to visit, explore, and enjoy!
