Have you ever wanted to visit the Glenwood Catwalk Recreation Area? It is truly amazing. You get to experience the raw beauty of the Gila Wilderness and the engineering ingenuity of the Gold Rush and more modern times, all in one. The Glenwood Catwalk is a fun adventure that will fill an afternoon. It is also great for your whole family.
The Glenwood Catwalk Recreation Area is located in the Gila National Forest, 66 miles northwest of Silver City via Hwy 180. It is quite close to the little towns of Glenwood and Alma. You enter a narrow parking lot with restrooms and commence up some stone stairs.
The catwalk is a half-mile out-and-back trail on a suspended metal bridge bolted (securely, I think) into the rocky walls of Whitewater Canyon.
The walk itself is pretty easy. The bridge is wide for wheelchair access. You can watch Whitewater Creek gushing under the grating. Whitewater Creek was pretty shallow when we went, but it still got pretty aggressive in a few spots where it was bottlenecked by boulders.
At one point, we went through this narrow spot. Tight squeeze!
I was mesmerized and kept looking up as well as down. Whitewater Canyon has carved its way through the rock. The canyon walls features all manner of desert life, clinging to the rocks for dear life. Birds flit in and out of crevices and crannies.
The end of the Glenwood Catwalk stops being wheelchair-accessible as it ascends down some stairs and then crosses Whitewater Creek. It was shallow enough for our feet to barely get wet, but I could see it becoming uncrossable certain times of the year.
From this area, you can cross a little bridge and hike about .75 miles back to a viewing area. There are currently efforts in place to restore the rest of the hiking trail all the way back to Hummingbird Saddle from there. We didn’t go there this time due to having little ones, but one day!
Throughout, you could read up on the history of the Glenwood Catwalk on interpretive signs. In 1870, gold and silver were discovered by Sgt. James Cooney, who staked a claim and began mining in 1875 upon his discharge from the military. He became very rich and soon attracted investors to what would become the highly profitable Mogollon Mining District. At its heyday, about 400 miners were working claims in the area, mining significant amounts of gold, silver, and copper.
A miner named John Graham realized that the mines could become even more profitable with a processing mill nearby. He zeroed in on Whitewater Creek as a good source of power for the mill. The water exits Whitewater Canyon at a trickle during dry parts of the year, so John Graham worked with the former governor of Colorado (David Moffat) to construct a four-inch pipeline all the way back into the canyon, where the water is deepest and strongest. You can still see some of this old pipeline and other remnants of the area’s history along the Glenwood Catwalk.
From 1893-1913, the town of Graham (named after John Graham and known colloquially as Whitewater) flourished near the Whitewater Canyon mill. There were the characteristic features of all mining towns in the region – dance hall, saloon, laundry, general store. Up to 200 miners lived in Graham during its zenith. But the mining bust and the drop in silver values contributed to the town’s rapid decline and the closing of the processing mill in 1913.
Both the mill and most of the pipeline, incredible feats of engineering in the rugged Gila wilderness, were sold as scrap. The Glenwood Catwalk was thus abandoned for almost 20 years. I can’t imagine this incredible place being untouched and undiscovered for so long!
Fortunately, the Gila Wilderness became a federally protected area in 1924. Efforts to preserve the Gila’s cool history and even cooler ecosystem resulted in the Conservation Corps constructing the Glenwood Catwalk Recreation Area in 1934. The parking lot is on the same spot as the original town of Graham. The horrific lightning-caused Whitewater-Baldy Fire of 2012 led to extreme flooding in Whitewater Canyon, which totally washed away the bridge system. Soon, it was rebuilt as you can currently experience it today.
After traversing the Catwalk and enjoying some time in the deeper pools beyond the fiberglass bridge, we came back the alternative way. There is a lot of stone stairs going up and down and some of them have crumbled into slate and gravel which is slippery, so it’s not very accessible for strollers or wheelchairs.
We enjoyed a picnic in the parking lot and then we went further into the Mogollon mountains to explore Mogollon.
We also followed McKean Road back to view Sgt. James Cooney’s grave.
Cooney was killed in a Chiricahua Apache raid in 1880 and his brother and friends eked his grave out of stone in the side of the mountain. There are other graves around it from other men killed in the same skirmish. You can still visit his grave today; it is on private property but on a public access road near the Mineral Creek Trailhead. The road is gravel and crosses a few streams so a high clearance vehicle is probably ideal.
I highly encourage you to combine a Mogollon tour with a Glenwood Catwalk adventure in the same day. Then camp in one of the nearby campgrounds or rent a cabin near Glenwood. We actually stayed at the Bear Mountain Lodge in Silver City which was a neat adventure on its own. Exploring this area really makes the most perfect weekend trip.