Darby Well Road

The Sonoran desert covers most of the southern half of Arizona but varies greatly in appearance. Near the California border it's sparse, almost bleak in appearance. Dirt, rocks, hills made of dirt, hills made of rocks, the occasional palo verde or mesquite tree, ocotillos and creosote bushes. That's about it. As you make your way east the flora changes dramatically, cactus everywhere, and that's what I like. Darby Well Road (which turns into Bates Well Road) is just north of the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and while the organ pipe cactus here aren't plentiful, they do make an appearance. In addition there are plentiful Saguaros, Barrel cactus, and various Chollas (including the teddy bear and jumping Chollas, which look amazing but are not a pleasant encounter).

I drove at least 5 miles in from the main road, mostly just looking for a T-Mobile signal. Luckily I found one at what might be the most scenic spot, 32.285692,-112.852141. The cell signal was decent but the speed made it almost unusable, hence my one bar rating. The road was washboard in spots but otherwise manageable. Beyond these coordinates you can descend into the valley to the East but you'll need 4wd. If you continue down Bates Well Road to the south and west the vegetation starts to thin out a bit and the views aren't as impressive.

The site itself was a large clearing among the vegetation, with expansive valley views on both sides. Not quite level but not too far off. There was a stone fire ring and almost no garbage. Nice. The nighttime sky was fairly dark with just a little light pollution coming from Ajo and Why. There were occasional coyotes at dusk and dawn, birds, rabbits, and they typical bugs, including the absolutely terrifying Tarantula Hawk.

This area is just outside the Barry Goldwater bombing range, and you'll get regular air traffic overhead, the most common being the A-10 Warthogs, which sometimes fly real low. If occasional screaming jets and distant but sometimes very loud booms (sonic?, bombs?) aren't your thing then this isn't your spot. I happen to enjoy them, and just about everything else at this location.

Camped 1/13/20-1/15/19 (arrived Mon, left Thur). As mentioned, there are lots of sites to choose from, some along the main loop road, others off the road or on side roads or ATV trails. Our site was perfect with no glass, great views, level, with a fire ring. Although it was in a large area of multiple sites, thankfully no one camped near us. Other campers there were spread out. Being January and during the week, there were not tons of people nor ATVers. The only sounds were the birds and the jets overhead (Barry Goldwater Air Force Range nearby).

Darby Wells Rd has an intersection where Scenic Loop Rd turns right, but Darby Wells continues straight, turning into Bates Well Rd. This road is well maintained too, and goes to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. There are sites along this road as well. Scenic Loop Rd has sites and the side roads too. Keep in mind rain when camping here. Along the main loop, there are a number of washes with 'Do Not Enter When Flooded' signs.

The Ajo Visitor Center has good info, area maps, and is located in the plaza. The lady there told us the Shell station around the curve in town sells beer. There is one supermarket at the north end of town, and also Dollar General and a Family Dollar.

We had absolutely no service with AT&T where we camped and in town, but then we have a cheap plan, so the tower we could see was not available to us, even though AT&T was able to text us about our
upcoming bill.

Lots of hiking opportunities - with the dog, we found walking the sandy washes or the roads best (for no stickers in the feet). Great dark skies and amazing sunsets.

Well, this place is gorgeous and interesting. However, you may have decent internet in one spot, and 15 yards away not have it at all. My mistake was not testing before I fully unhitched. Most of my neighbors had no problems.

Just check first. I had Verizon and ATT. ATT pretty much non-existent. Verizon so slow it was not do-able.

Lots of coyotes. Signs in the area speaking of illegal smuggling going on, possibly. Did that scare me? Nope.

That's about all I can give for input as I decided to leave the next day.

We are here now and love it. We don’t see the glass around that the other review states but maybe we just got lucky. Our site is very clean. We took a right at the smuggling sign. Only one border patrol has gone by that we have seen and it didn’t seem fast to us as stated in another review. I kinda like having them around so we aren’t bothered by it. Beautiful sunrises and sunsets. Lots of back roads to take. Very quiet and dark. Fuel seems a bit cheaper in Ajo than Why. Groceries in Ajo a bit expensive. We stocked up before we came and were glad. We did buy wine there and it was a bit pricey. But hey, campfire necessities. We would stay here again no problem. We also had great Verizon and several television stations.

This was our second time camping on Darby Well Rd. and we loved it just as much the second time around. There are tons of spots for RVs of all sizes and the amazing views filled with mountains and saguaros can't be beat. We especially loved the endless network of 4x4 roads for hiking and biking. The smuggling signs and border patrol are just a fact of life in this area and didn't diminish our enjoyment at all. The only negative during our stay was the class C that came and parked near us and then ran their generator all night long (WTF is wrong with people). Other than that, it was perfect.

My husband and I really enjoyed our stay. We had no issues at all. We came in on Darby Wells Road, and at the sign about smuggling etc we continued straight. We went about half a mile and found a great large spot for us and our 19ft. travel trailer on the right.

(There are plenty of spots before the one we found, there are many at the same sign if you turn directly left of the sign AND if you turn right at the sign. We scoped out a lof of the area.) Continuing straight is a bit rough road, left is a bit rough, right is much smoother.

We enjoyed hiking the area and did see a few boarder patrol agents, they were nice.

Be sure to check out Ajo proper, they are doing a lot with this little town and it was nice to see such a community effort.

We stayed here for a week after visiting Organ Pipe Cactus NM, which is an exceptional place to see. We ended up taking the last road to your left before you get to the much talked about 'sign' which is at an intersection of other roads. We drove down our road or a bit and then tucked away down into a nice spot. I chose this spot knowing that we were near a big 'group site' that could accommodate multiple rigs assuming that with plentiful other options no one would camp on top of us.... I was wrong. On our second day, two RV's set up no more than 30 feet from us. It was disappointing but that was their 'favorite spot' apparently and they ended up being nice so I didn't make a fuss.

Border Patrol does drive this area a lot and they drive FAST! Unsurprisingly, we saw two broken down border patrol vehicles need to be towed out of here. Their work is necessary however as when hiking some of the nearby mountains we found a bunch of black water bottles in the bushes (a sign of illegal immigration). All this aside we never felt the least bit unsafe while camping here.

Verizon 4G gets better as you get closer to the 'sign' intersection, and then drops off again as you pass it and go deeper. For us right in the middle of the camping areas we had strong signal. There is a ton of hiking and exploring opportunities around here, and you can even go check out the Darby Well (which still diligently pumps water as the wind blows despite the trough being overgrown and unused). The giant pit mine kind of ruins the view out half of your windows but it is inactive so there is no noise coming from it.

The road in is pretty good with the ancillary roads being of mixed quality. We pulled over on the main road to scout the side roads on foot before pulling down them just to be safe. The garbage seems mixed between typical broken glass of modern folk and old trash piles from when the area was an active mine (think piles of hundreds of old tin cans half buried in the dirt).

There are some nice spots especially starting about 1 mile back. About 2am our first night there was a Border Patrol bust about 400 yards from camp (helicopters and all). Second day there was a beer drinking/target shooting group nearby. Traffic all day and some all night too (patrols). Kind of a neat area, but prefer to not hike with a sidearm so we cut our stay short.