Las Cienegas National Conservation Area is southeast of Tucson, AZ and contains one of my favorite boondocking spots.
Overcast skies made for an interesting drive to Las Cienegas, but partial clearing made for an unbelievable evening sky!
The boondocking spots on this Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land and cattle ranch overlook endless miles of desert grasslands and rolling oak-studded hills surrounded by “sky island” mountain ranges…something I never expected in southeast Arizona.
It was March of 2021 and we woke to ominous skies but relatively warm weather so decided on a bicycle ride to Empire Ranch Headquarters.
The Empire Ranch was originally a 160 acre homestead belonging to William Wakefield with a small flat roof four-room house erected between 1871 and 1874. John Harvey and Walter Vail purchased the land and expanded the home and land holdings in 1878. The additional construction at the working cattle ranch allowed for cowboy quarters, a company store, cook’s quarters, and foreman’s quarters. The Empire Ranch grew to cover thousands of acres of land and supported over 40,000 head of cattle. After Walter Vail was killed in an LA streetcar accident, his son managed the ranch until it was sold to the Chirachua Ranches Company in 1928. It was then that the ranch house was modernized by Frank Boice and his wife Mary. Several sales occurred between Frank’s death in 1956 and the purchase by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in 1988 for preservation.
We took a self-guided tour of the Empire Ranch and got caught in the rain on the bike ride back.
Clearer skies and stacks of lenticular clouds made for another scenic day of cycling through the area.
We enjoyed the boondocking so much that we came back to the same area later in the trip. Have you ever been to the area? It’s worth a stop!
