The Small State Park Where You Can View The Best Fall Foliage In Arizona
By Tori Jane|Published September 11, 2023
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Tori Jane
Author
Tori Jane is a storm chaser, writer, photographer, and the village idiot - in that order. When she's not out and about dancing with the meanest storms on planet Earth for funsies she can be found wandering, shooting landscapes, writing, editing photos, and otherwise up to no good. Legend has it that she can also be occasionally spotted typing up short bios in the third person, but those rumors are unsubstantiated.
Northern Arizona is world-famous for its outrageously photogenic beauty; you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the United States who hasn’t heard of the Grand Canyon, and good luck finding a native Arizonan who’s never heard of Flagstaff, either. But there’s one little town that often gets overlooked, likely thanks to its location in Cottonwood, an underrated small town between the tourist meccas of Jerome and Sedona. Cottonwood is home to a small state park known as Dead Horse Ranch State Park, and although it’s gorgeous all year, it also just so happens to be one of the best places to see fall colors in Arizona.
Despite its eerie-sounding name, Dead Horse Ranch State Park is pretty idyllic.
Temperatures here are pleasant year-round; it gets a bit chilly in the winter, with the occasional snow flurry - but in the summer, it tends to be warm, not hot, and pleasant.
In the fall, though, everything comes to life in the best of ways.
Sure, there's spring, where everything literally comes back to life, but autumn is like a second spring - a spring to celebrate another changing of the seasons.
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The trees here start giving vague hints that they may shift soon in mid-to-late September.
By mid-October, typically the autumnal color shift is well underway. Oftentimes, you can still catch the show in early November - it all depends on a few factors.
Oftentimes folks credit the first frost with telling the trees it's time to change, but this is a myth.
It's actually the shortening of the days (and the lengthening of the nights) that slow down chlorophyll production in leaves, and eventually, as this process slows even further by the end of autumn, the leaves will be in full blaze.
Dead Horse Ranch State Park is open year-round to campers, so if you'd like to sleep among the changing leaves, you totally can.
There are also several wonderful hiking trails within the park; on foot is one of the best ways to see these colors at their best.
This particular park is fairly small, and it often gets overlooked in favor of the spookiness of Jerome or the changing colors of Red Rock State Park nearby.
For more information about Dead Horse Ranch State Park, be sure to visit the official Arizona State Parks website. If you’d like all the details about the best hiking trails in this gorgeous Arizona state park, our friends at AllTrails are happy to help. Where are your favorite spots for fall colors in Arizona? Let us know.
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