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The Prescott Peavine Trail follows the old Santa Fe, Prescott and Phoenix rail grade north from the Sundog Trailhead on the edge of Prescott, through the Granite Dells and along the east shore of Watson Lake to the Peavine North Trailhead. The crushed stone surface is wide and nearly level, so the ride is about the scenery: rounded granite domes that crowd the corridor, then open water and marsh at the lake. About three miles in, at Point of Rocks, the Iron King Trail branches east toward Prescott Valley on another rail bed. This is an easy out and back for any rider, and a good place to start exploring the Prescott trail system.
Prescott Peavine Trail
Your comfort. Prognosticated.
-Cory
In a typical year the Prescott Peavine Trail has about 141 to 213 days of excellent weather for popular activities such as hiking, dog walking, walking, birding, e-biking, running, and biking, with March, October, and November the best months.
Hourly comfort scores for the next 15 days of weather, tuned to your activity and your own thresholds.
Plan your visit to this trail. Get the best windows for a comfortable outing.
Enjoy the Prescott Peavine Trail!
There is too little deciduous tree cover along the Prescott Peavine Trail to measure a peak color window. The trail has 0% deciduous coverage, with the majority being Emory oak.
The first train out of Prescott on the Santa Fe, Prescott and Phoenix Railway left on April 24, 1893. Until then the gap in the rocks at Point of Rocks was a place travelers dreaded. Stagecoaches and wagon trains hurried past the granite piles because the boulders hid highwaymen. Frank M. Murphy, a Prescott real estate broker with Chicago money behind him, incorporated the railway on May 27, 1891, to cut the cost of hauling ore by wagon from the mines at Congress and Yarnell. Crews started grading at Ash Fork in August 1892. The line reached Phoenix in March 1895, and its curves and trestles through the Dells earned it the Peavine name. In 1898 the Prescott and Eastern joined the Peavine at Point of Rocks and ran east to the mines around Mayer. The Santa Fe folded the railway into a subsidiary in 1911. In 1962 the Santa Fe completed a bypass that took the main line around Prescott and left the old grade through the Dells as a branch. Sources disagree on when the last train ran, giving 1984 and 1992. The rails came up, the roadbed stayed, and in 1998 the City of Prescott reopened it as the Peavine Trail. The trail was named a National Recreation Trail on May 31, 2001. Chino Valley had opened its own five mile Peavine segment to the north in 1994. In 2010 Rails-to-Trails Conservancy added the Peavine and the connecting Iron King Trail to its Rail-Trail Hall of Fame.
Iron King TrailChino Valley Peavine Trail
