Hell Hole

The Hell Hole Inventoried Roadless Area covers 19,553 acres of Mogollon-country mountain terrain in the Glenwood Ranger District of the Gila National Forest. Winchester Peak, McMullen Peak, Yellowjacket Peak, and Tillie Hall Peak form the high points, and the tract cuts into Catron and Grant counties in New Mexico and reaches Greenlee County, Arizona. Steep canyons — Tillie Hall Canyon, North Sawmill Canyon, Dark Thunder Canyon, Pothole Canyon, Winchester Canyon, Geronimo Draw, and Smith Canyon — descend off the ridgelines into the Pine Cienega Creek headwaters, with Sawmill Creek, Mule Creek, Tennessee Creek, North Fork Tennessee Creek, and Coal Creek draining the tract. Springs are numerous and named — Dark Thunder, Lower Winchester, Agate, Horse Pasture, Grapevine, Branding Iron, Miner, Tom Osher, and Tom O'Shea among them — but flow is seasonal, and stock tanks (Rock Bottom, West, Bear, Ball, Winchester, Bradberry, Pinyon, Tennessee, Geronimo) catch the runoff.

Vegetation reflects a Sky Island gradient. Sky Island Pinyon-Juniper Woodland and Sky Island Juniper Savanna, with two-needle pinyon (Pinus edulis), Mexican pinyon (Pinus cembroides), border pinyon (Pinus discolor), and alligator juniper (Juniperus deppeana), cover the warm benches. Arizona Plateau Chaparral on rocky slopes holds pointleaf manzanita (Arctostaphylos pungens), Wright's silktassel (Garrya wrightii), and shrub live oak (Quercus turbinella). Mid-elevation Sky Island Oak Woodland and Sky Island Pine-Oak Forest carry Emory oak (Quercus emoryi), Arizona white oak (Quercus arizonica), Mexican blue oak (Quercus oblongifolia), silver-leaf oak (Quercus hypoleucoides), netleaf oak (Quercus rugosa), and canyon live oak (Quercus chrysolepis). Higher, Southern Rockies Ponderosa Pine Woodland and Sky Island High Mountain Conifer-Oak Forest give way to Southern Rockies Mixed Conifer Forest and isolated stands of quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) near the peaks. Warm Desert Mountain Streamside Woodland along Pine Cienega Creek adds netleaf hackberry (Celtis reticulata) and Arizona grape (Vitis arizonica).

Wildlife occupies the full stratification. The Mexican jay (Aphelocoma wollweberi), bridled titmouse (Baeolophus wollweberi), and acorn woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus) work the oak canopy; Grace's warbler (Setophaga graciae), Virginia's warbler (Leiothlypis virginiae), and Mexican whip-poor-will (Antrostomus arizonae) nest in the pine-oak; Arizona gray squirrel (Sciurus arizonensis) uses the oak mast. Common black hawk (Buteogallus anthracinus) and great blue heron (Ardea herodias) hunt the canyon-bottom streams. The canyon treefrog (Dryophytes arenicolor) uses the rock pools. Rock wren (Salpinctes obsoletus) and canyon wren patterns mark the canyon walls; Gila monster (Heloderma suspectum, near threatened) and Arizona black rattlesnake (Crotalus cerberus) use the warm lower slopes; American black bear (Ursus americanus) ranges the oak and ponderosa country. Portions of this area fall within the potential range of several federally listed species; see the Conservation section for details.

A walker dropping off Winchester Peak into Dark Thunder Canyon traces the Sky Island gradient in a morning — oak canopy closing over the trail, canyon treefrog calling from the shaded pools, and the sharper pine scent arriving as the route climbs back toward the ridge. The canyon bottoms carry the warm musk of wet sedge; the ridges smell of juniper and manzanita. By late afternoon the cumulus builds over the Mogollon Mountains and the canyon sound shifts to the click of scrub jays and the distant call of the Mexican jay.

The Hell Hole Inventoried Roadless Area covers 19,553 acres in the Glenwood Ranger District of the Gila National Forest, straddling Catron and Grant counties in New Mexico and Greenlee County, Arizona. It sits in the Mogollon country west of the Gila Wilderness, a landscape whose human history runs from the Mogollon cliff-dwellers through the Apache Wars and the silver-camp era into the federal forest reserves.

The earliest known inhabitants of the Gila country were the Mogollon people, who lived in the region from roughly 200 to 1400 CE and built the cliff dwellings that survive on the headwaters of the Gila River [1]. After the Mogollon culture waned, the Apache — particularly the Chiricahua and Mimbreño (Warm Springs) bands — occupied the region [1]. The Chihenne Chiricahua leader Victorio considered Ojo Caliente in present-day Catron County his native land and, in 1877, fled the San Carlos Reservation rather than remain there [4]. After two years of unsuccessful negotiation, Victorio's warriors attacked the Cooney Mine on Mineral Creek on April 28, 1880, in what became known as the Alma Massacre; the raid killed three miners outright and reached down the valley into the Frisco (Alma) settlement [4]. The Apache Wars continued in the Mogollon country until Geronimo's final surrender in 1886.

The mining boom shaped the region in parallel. In 1870, Sergeant James C. Cooney of the 8th Cavalry discovered a mineral vein about eight miles up what is now Mineral Creek [4]. After mustering out in 1875, Cooney developed the claim; by 1880 his Cooney Mine had become a valuable silver, gold, and copper producer and Cooney Camp grew to roughly 300–400 residents by the turn of the century [4]. When ore bodies were traced over the mountain into the Silver Creek drainage, the nearby camp of Mogollon grew rapidly into a town of an estimated 6,000–8,000 miners and their families in the early 1900s [4]. Mogollon faded in the 1940s as world war and falling silver prices closed the mines [4].

Federal forest administration arrived in the same era. The Gila River Forest Reserve was proclaimed in March 1899; on July 21, 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt issued Proclamation 582 enlarging the reserve and renaming it the Gila Forest Reserve [3]. That same year Congress transferred the Forest Reserves from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture, creating the Forest Service, and in 1907 reserves were redesignated "national forests" [2]. More than 148 million acres were added to the National Forest System during Roosevelt's presidency [2]. In 1924, at the urging of Aldo Leopold, 755,000 acres of the Gila east of the Hell Hole country were designated the first administratively protected wilderness in the United States [1].

The 19,553-acre Hell Hole Roadless Area is managed today from the Glenwood Ranger District and is protected under the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule. Tank and spring names scattered across the tract — Geronimo Water Tank, Winchester Tank, Branding Iron Spring, Bradberry Tank, and Tom O'Shea Springs among them — preserve the fingerprints of the Apache-era and stock-raising landscape.

The Hell Hole Inventoried Roadless Area protects 19,553 acres of Sky Island country at the Pine Cienega Creek headwaters in the Gila National Forest, with major tributaries — Sawmill Creek, Mule Creek, Tennessee Creek, North Fork Tennessee Creek, and Coal Creek — draining the block. The area spans Sky Island Pinyon-Juniper Woodland, Sky Island Oak Woodland, Sky Island Pine-Oak Forest, Southern Rockies Ponderosa Pine Woodland, and Southern Rockies Mixed Conifer Forest. Roadless condition preserves the intact headwater hydrology, the unfragmented vegetation gradient, and the habitat mosaic that an unusually high number of federally listed aquatic species depend on downstream.

Vital Resources Protected

• Headwater Stream Integrity for Listed Native Fish: The Pine Cienega Creek, Mule Creek, and Coal Creek headwaters generate cold, low-sediment flow that supports downstream habitat for loach minnow (endangered), spikedace (endangered), Gila chub (endangered), Gila topminnow (endangered), Chiricahua leopard frog (threatened), northern Mexican gartersnake (threatened), and Gila trout (threatened). Few blocks of the Gila National Forest hold this many listed aquatic species simultaneously; the roadless condition is what preserves the cold, clean water each of them requires.

• Interior Sky Island and Mixed-Conifer Habitat: The continuous climb from pinyon-juniper through oak woodland and pine-oak into mixed conifer at Winchester, McMullen, Yellowjacket, and Tillie Hall peaks provides the canopy, snag, and oak-mast structure Mexican spotted owl (threatened) requires and that Mexican whip-poor-will and Arizona gray squirrel depend on. The area also lies within the experimental-population range of the Mexican wolf (Canis lupus baileyi), whose persistence is tightly linked to low road density.

• Riparian Canyon Habitat for Streamside Birds and Amphibians: Warm Desert Mountain Streamside Woodland along the canyon bottoms supports yellow-billed cuckoo (threatened) and provides breeding habitat for canyon treefrog and western black-tailed rattlesnake. Roadless canyons maintain the gallery canopy and shaded water pools that this streamside assemblage needs.

Potential Effects of Road Construction

• Sedimentation of Cold Headwater Streams: Cutting a road across the steep canyon walls would expose erodible soils and send sediment pulses into Pine Cienega Creek, Mule Creek, Tennessee Creek, and Coal Creek. Fine sediment from cut slopes and culvert washouts can persist in stream gravels for decades, burying the spawning substrate that loach minnow, spikedace, Gila chub, Gila topminnow, and Gila trout require — a population-level impact that is among the hardest to reverse.

• Fragmentation of Wolf and Spotted Owl Range: New roads and the motorized use they enable are documented threats to the Mexican wolf, whose population declines are linked to hunting, collection, and persecution/control along access corridors. New roads also introduce edge effects, nest-site disturbance, and salvage-logging pressure into Mexican spotted owl mixed-conifer habitat. Once built, the disturbance footprint persists in vegetation structure and predator behavior for decades.

• Invasive Species and Altered Fire Regime: Road construction on pinyon-juniper, oak, and pine-oak slopes opens disturbed corridors to non-native grasses and other invasives, changing fine-fuel structure and pushing fire frequency and intensity away from the mixed-severity regime that maintains Sky Island oak woodland. Once invasive grasses take hold on the sandy and shaley soils of the Mogollon country, reversal is effectively impossible at human timescales.

The Hell Hole Inventoried Roadless Area covers 19,553 acres of Mogollon-country ridges and canyons in the Glenwood Ranger District of the Gila National Forest, straddling the New Mexico–Arizona border. Access is via the Maverick Trailhead (#568), and Coal Creek Campground provides the principal developed overnight site on the area's edge. No interior trails are formally verified, so most recreation is dispersed and backcountry: cross-country walking from forest-road boundaries, hunting, and birding.

Birding is the best-documented activity. Two eBird hotspots fall within 24 kilometers: Blackjack Campground (110 species, 145 checklists) and Coal Creek Campground (79 species, 83 checklists). Together they establish the Hell Hole landscape as a productive Sky Island birding district. Expected sightings in the pine-oak and oak-woodland canopy include Grace's warbler (Setophaga graciae), Virginia's warbler (Leiothlypis virginiae), Mexican whip-poor-will (Antrostomus arizonae), Mexican jay (Aphelocoma wollweberi), bridled titmouse (Baeolophus wollweberi), Hutton's vireo (Vireo huttoni), painted redstart (Myioborus pictus), and acorn woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus). Along canyon bottoms, great blue heron (Ardea herodias) and common black hawk (Buteogallus anthracinus) hunt the pools, and rock wren (Salpinctes obsoletus) works the cliff faces.

Hunting under New Mexico Department of Game and Fish and Arizona Game and Fish Department regulations (depending on location) is a dispersed use. Documented species in the area include American black bear (Ursus americanus), and the broader Glenwood Ranger District supports elk, mule deer, javelina, and Merriam's wild turkey. Hunters walk from the Maverick Trailhead and from Coal Creek Campground into Tillie Hall, North Sawmill, Dark Thunder, Winchester, Geronimo, and Smith canyons. Parties carry their own water or plan around Branding Iron Spring, Lower Winchester Spring, Horse Pasture Spring, Grapevine Spring, and Miner Spring, confirming flow before relying on any one source.

Reptile and amphibian watching is distinctive. The area is within the warm-adapted range of the Gila monster (Heloderma suspectum, near threatened), Arizona black rattlesnake (Crotalus cerberus), and western black-tailed rattlesnake (Crotalus molossus). Canyon treefrog (Dryophytes arenicolor) can be heard from the canyon pools after monsoon storms. Observation requires slow walking, good footwear, and respectful distance — these species are protected and not for handling.

Photography rewards the Sky Island scenery: oak canopies rippling in autumn light, broken volcanic cliff faces on Winchester Peak and Yellowjacket Peak, canyon pools in Dark Thunder Canyon after a monsoon, and the long ridge views from Tillie Hall Peak across the Mogollon country. Dispersed camping is possible away from the developed Coal Creek site, following Gila National Forest regulations.

Night skies over Hell Hole are excellent — the area's isolation and the absence of settlement keep light pollution low. Stargazers set up at Coal Creek Campground or dispersed sites along the area boundary for consistent dark-sky conditions.

The recreation Hell Hole offers — long cross-country walks through oak woodland and canyon, hunts that depend on unbroken movement between ridge and canyon, 110-species birding days across the Sky Island gradient, and dark-sky stargazing — depends directly on the area's roadless condition. A new road would fragment spotted owl habitat, cross the experimental Mexican wolf range, and introduce sediment to the listed-fish-critical streams that drain the block. The unbroken character of the landscape is what makes these backcountry uses possible.