Dead Horse Ranch State Park

Dead Horse Ranch State Park is an Arizona state park on the Verde River, in the area known as the Verde River Greenway, at about 3,300 feet elevation. It covers 423 acres with ten miles of hiking trail, 150 campground sites, 23 group camping sites and several picnic areas, and gives trailhead access to the Dead Horse Trail System on adjacent Coconino National Forest land. The park takes its name from the Ireys family, who named the ranch and later sold the land to the state of Arizona. It recorded 206,069 visits in 2024.

Where it is

Dead Horse Ranch State Park is a state park near Cottonwood, in Yavapai County. It is one of the state parks in this database, and appears in the statewide ranking of Arizona attractions.

How this ranking was reached

The score combines the published visitor count with public interest and tourism significance, which is what earns it high confidence. The weighting is explained in full on the methodology page, and every axis is broken out under Facts and sources at the foot of this page.

Mentioned in

• Five parks carry half of Arizona's state park visits — Arizona's 32 state park units recorded 3,122,079 visits in 2024, and the five busiest accounted for 53 per cent of them.

Sources

• Visitation: Arizona Office of Tourism Monthly State Parks Visitation Report (December 2025); source Arizona State Parks, compiled by AHRRC(opens in a new tab)
• Public interest: Wikimedia pageviews (en.wikipedia, human traffic), 2024
• Coordinates and designations: Wikidata(opens in a new tab)
• County: U.S. Census geography via FCC Area API, resolved from coordinates
• Official site: https://azstateparks.com/dead-horse(opens in a new tab)

Record last verified 2026-08-12.