Lost Dutchman State Park Campground

AWESOME trails for all skill levels. Great views, too

If you're an avid hiker, they have some really intense mountainous trails here. But there's easier trails as well! Just far enough away from Phoenix to really feel like you're out in nature, but it's only a 45 minutes drive away :) And be on the lookout for buried treasure!

We really liked this park. It is not far from Apache Junction, Mesa and the larger Phoenix area. And it is very close to the Superstition Mountains and the great views of Tonto National Forest.

The park is very well landscaped and meticulously maintained. As soon as a site is vacated, a camp host comes around in a golf cart with brooms and rakes on the back. The pavement is swept and the gravel raked, so the campsite is ready to receive the next camper. The rest rooms are cleaned once a day and on a busy day, that is not enough. We mostly used the shower and toilet in our trailer, but of the two occasions we did visit the facilities of the park, we once had a spotlessly clean rest room and once a very messy one.

We stayed in a brand new loop, which was not on most maps yet. Our first site was #89. This is a curved pull through site with electricity and city water. This site is very close to the next one - just a bit too close to our liking. We pulled in just far enough for our electricity cable and city water hose to reach their respective poles. That way our view did not include our next door neighbors - who were very nice, but we did not need to have their trailer in our view all the time. There was plenty of room to park our car in front of the trailer. On arrival, we were greeted with loud gunfire from somewhere out in the desert - Arizona has very loose regulations with regard to firearms. Fortunately it only lasted for about 0.5 hour. We heard gunfire once more during our stay. There was no road noise and the other campers were also very quiet.

All campsites are paved and most are nicely level, with a picnic table and fire pit on gravel. There are many bushes and small trees. Not enough for shade, but enough for some privacy and for a lot of small birds. Some sites are very close to each other, but most are well spaced. The distance from this new loop to the neares facilities is quite long. The management is developing a new building with rest rooms and showers between the new loop and the group campsite. This will be a great improvement for most campers, except for site #89, which is right next to the new access road that is going to lead to the new facilities.

We had first booked for only three nights. We liked it so much that we extended our stay, which meant that we had to move to another site. Since we had to dump anyway, this was not a problem. The second site was #103, which is a large back-in site in the same loop but with more privacy and an even nicer view.

The staff, the camp hosts and the other campers were very friendly. We highly recommend this park.

I arrived at this park at 4:00pm in high season with no reservations. Even their designated "Overflow Loop" was full! But they did not turn me away. Instead, they had me park in their "Overflow for the overflow" which was the Group Camp parking lot. Now granted, this was $20 a night for an asphalt parking lot with no hookups, but I had the entire area all to myself! It was so peaceful over there, I opted to stay put even when other sites opened up.

They have a new overflow loop (pictured) which just opened this past Thanksgiving. If I were to go back, I would try for this area. Although there are no hook-ups, the loop is brand new, the back of the loop has great views, and all sites are level. The new mountain bike trail and a spur to other trails runs right by the campground.

I used the showers over by the group area. Although they were clean, hot water was an issue during peak times. So shower very early or very late.

All hosts and volunteers were very helpful, and great hiking here!

Lost Dutchman State Park is a great campground with lots of hiking trails and beautiful landscaping. Our site was medium in size compared to some of the others, and relatively private. The generators in our loop ran all day and even past quiet hours.

Friends of ours were in site 48, which had a fantastic "yard" and view of the superstition mountains, next time I'd try and reserve that site or one near it.

I had trouble figuring out which sites had water and electric on the AZ state parks website, so here it is: 16-32, 41-58, 75-104

This is a very scenic place to stay, the Superstition Mountain rises above the campground and glows beautifully at sunset. Several trails that head into the superstition wilderness originate in the park, with a mix of easy,moderate and challenging hikes. Not being so keen on heights we stuck to the easy and moderate trails. There is also a mountain bike loop around the park.

The park is convenient for local grocery stores and supplies, and the greater Phoenix area is not too far away for everything else.

The park was crowded in February, reservations are advisable, if not essential. At the weekends it was noticeably noisier than during the week. The site quality varies, some have great spacious areas, other seem quite cramped. I felt that especially in the first loop as you enter the ground, the sites were really crammed in. We were very pleased with our site (62) as it had good space and we weren't too close to neighbors.

There is a mix of dry and electricity and water. We picked dry as we have solar panels,and the onsite showers were great so we didn't have any water worries.

Overall I really liked the campground and as long as I got a good site I would be very happy to spend more time here.

We LOVED this park. I first had trouble when we got there as I thought we were going to "Phoenix". Although the smaller town of Apache Junction is not far (there's a Fry's grocery store about 15 minutes away) downtown Phoenix is over an hour. Once we decided to settle down and enjoy the park we were perfectly happy and wished we could stay longer!

We were in a newer loop, so there was no restroom in our loop but it was only a short walk or bike ride to the showers and they were great.

Sam and I got up early one morning and hiked to the top of Flat Iron which was more scrambling than hiking. Up to the bowling alley is a pretty easy hike and it has a beautiful view, its just after that the trail becomes difficult.

The kids loved riding the mtn bike trail around the campground, and we also found it a great 20 minute ride.

As long as you get a site on the outer loops, they seemed pretty spacious. We loved ours - because the site next to us was a pull through, we had no one blocking our front door view of the Superstition Mountains.

We had a great week at this campground and found ourselves staring at the scenery on a daily basis. We would swing through here in the future, but wished we had more hiking choices right out of the park.

Why - Spending some time in warm weather with easy hiking right out the door. We had heard about the beauty of the campground and wanted to see it first hand. Our site was a little tight (24) to the neighbors, but still had an amazing view of the mountains which are stunning at sunset. The sites on our side are staggered with the picnic / fire pit areas so you are not staring at each other. A nice setup. We noticed the dry/overflow sites are amazing with front row views of the mountains and we would definitely look to stay there in the future (only $20 and you can get a refund if you move over there).

Pros - A couple of great hikes right out the door and a small mountain bike loop. The hikes are beautiful with great views of the surrounding scenery. Weekends are BUSY and we waited those out while enjoying midweek hikes. The park also put on several events at the onsite amphitheater including musicians and an astronomy talk. In addition there was a full moon hike that we did not take part in. Sounded like a great event to plan for if traveling with kids. We also found several hikes that were not too far away by car - Peralta Canyon and The Gold Mine trail.

Recycle / Garbage - Recycle and garbage are all over the campground and hosts run by in their golf carts at least FOUR times a day to pick up everything. So very easy to access. I would not mind walking to the recycle and have the hosts spend more time cleaning bathrooms.

Cellular / Wifi - Verizon is great although does get busy at times.

Shopping is not far away - Frys, Safeway and Basha’s and of course a Walmart.

Wood - for sale on site at $5 with the hosts at each loop.

Cons - The gold mine tourist attraction across the street blows a train whistle all day long as well as gun fights on the weekends. Humorous the first few times, then annoying and finally you stop hearing it all together. We found it so annoying that we never even went over there to check it out. It was packed with tourists and looks like a popular attraction. Thankfully they close down fairly early and the whistles are done before sunset.

Full - This campground is always full and reservations are advisable (they open 1 year in advance). However, they do have several overflow areas and it appears doable to get in last minute. As mentioned above, we think the dry camping in the overflow section is beautiful. We noticed there are a TON of campground hosts - 3 on our loop of just 9 rigs So if they cut the campground hosts in half and double the number of showers it would be a little better balance.

Bathrooms - With only 2 restroom buildings and 6 showers in the park, they are busy! In addition they are only cleaned once a day. We found them very dirty when we stopped in for a peak. Most times we walked by there were lines of folks waiting to shower. With all those camp hosts I am surprised they are only able to clean the bathrooms once a day.

Cellular / Wifi - T-Mobile is terrible and completely unusable.

Suggestions For The Park - Cut your host numbers in half, open up the spaces for rental and put the hosts to work cleaning the bathrooms at least 2x a day.

We're solar powered do if we're not dispersed camping we don't mind paying less and staying in primitive sections. During our stay it seemed that at this park the people with rigs that should have hookups instead choose primitive camp sites and bring construction type (loud) generators with them do they won't miss out on using AC or their microwave. I'm not typically this vocal but we had great views of the Superstitions with 8 a.m. - 9 p.m. roaring of these machines. If you plan on communing with nature bring your noise canceling headphones. The no hookup section was older with really nicely spaced sites with great desert plants and tent pads. When we drove through the hookup section they seemed to be much smaller spaces. There were lots of different types of birds that were easily seen.The restroom was older, the 2 showers in the ladies room rely on natural light except only 1 has a window, the other you have to shower in the dark since there is no window. Fyi there is a nice laundromat, Superstition Laundry about 15:00 away if you need to use that service.

This became one of our favorite AZ state parks for the following reasons:

Views: Pick the right site and enjoy unobstructed views of the Superstitions and saguaro cacti.

Hiking: The Flatiron hike, an epic southern AZ day hike with lots of scrambling, can be accessed right from the campground. Get an early start and beat the Phoenix crowd. The park has moderate trails too, if you’re looking for a more relaxed walk.

Mountain biking: We loved doing laps on the campground’s four-mile mountain bike loop.

Easy access to amenities: It’s an easy drive to do grocery shopping, get caught up on your laundry, etc.

We stayed 4 nights, and would have considered another night or two if our campsite weren’t reserved. This is a busy place, but we had no problem with noise. Although we would normally opt to be off the grid in sunny southern Arizona, we chose a site in a hookup loop here. Our choice was based on the view, but came with the added benefit of not hearing any generators.