By Jon Johnson
GREENLEE COUNTY — For decades, Lower Eagle Creek and the San Francisco River were considered Greenlee County’s best-kept secrets. Local families and outdoor enthusiasts treated the remote, winding waterways as a quiet rural gem — a pristine landscape tucked away in the high-desert canyons.
But today, the word is out.
Greenlee County is experiencing an unprecedented surge in recreational Utility Terrain Vehicle (UTV) and “side-by-side” traffic as massive, coordinated groups from outside the region converge on the area’s delicate riverbeds. The sudden influx of hundreds of riders at a time, often mixed with widespread alcohol consumption, has pushed the Greenlee County Sheriff’s Office to its operational limits in these geographically isolated zones.
“We’re currently in Lower Eagle Creek, where we’ve had a large amount of side-by-side activity,” Greenlee County Sheriff Eric Ellison stated in an on-site interview. “It’s an off-road enthusiast site where people like to come and visit. It’s extremely beautiful here. And what we have been experiencing is a large number of side-by-sides across different groups. One group may have 107 side-by-sides. You add that with another group that has 50, and another group that has 50, and we end up with about two or three hundred side-by-sides in the creek at a time.”
Volatile Crowds and Limited Manpower
According to Sheriff Ellison, the sheer volume of visitors is compounding a more dangerous underlying issue: driving under the influence and the behavioral problems that follow it.
When hundreds of people gather in remote locations with alcohol, the environment can shift rapidly from recreation to chaos. Sheriff Ellison warned that impaired judgment in isolated backcountry areas predictably escalates law enforcement challenges.
“A large amount of people that are drinking or intoxicated comes with problems,” Sheriff Ellison said. “When they’re intoxicated, they make poor judgments and poor decisions. You know… You may have a fight, and that fight turns into a domestic, that domestic turns into an assault, that assault can turn into a homicide or rape. Those are things that we would have to deal with out here in a slow response time, where we don’t have the manpower to put out here.”
The reality of policing this vast terrain means a single deputy can easily find themselves outnumbered 400-to-1. If an officer needs to conduct a DUI investigation or execute an arrest, the travel time to transport a suspect back out of the rugged canyon terrain can take up to two hours each way.
“Our goal here at the Greenlee County Sheriff’s Office is to give our public safety and the safety that they deserve, and they require,” Ellison explained. “And we can’t do that with the manpower we have. We have had funding to buy side-by-sides and overtime for deputies to come out here, but when we have a hundred side-by-sides, and each one may have four people… you’re gonna have a lot of people—400 people versus one deputy out here. The odds are not in favor. When you have maybe 50% of those people driving impaired, the odds are overwhelming for us to maintain the standards of law.”
Haunted by Past Tragedies
The dangers of operating heavy machinery in unpredictable creek beds are not theoretical. Just last year, a tragic side-by-side rollover in a deep pocket of Lower Eagle Creek claimed the lives of two young sisters. It is a memory that continues to loom large over the local community and emergency personnel.
“We’ve also experienced a lot of wrecks and bringing up the past, about a year ago, we had a side-by-side that flipped over just north of me in the creek, and it drowned two little girls,” Sheriff Ellison said. “We’ve already forgotten about what happened then, and we don’t want to recreate that problem… It breaks our heart to have to experience those kinds of things. Pulling young ladies out of the river… I personally had to do that. I’ll never forget it. I never want to see that again.”
Unreported Wrecks Drain Mainline Resources
The crisis in the canyons is also triggering a dangerous ripple effect that drains resources from Greenlee County’s primary population centers, such as Clifton and Duncan.
When off-roaders crash their vehicles in remote areas and walk away without notifying authorities, the abandoned, damaged UTVs are frequently spotted by passing hikers or other riders.
“If there is a wreck in a remote area, the vehicle has been sat outside on the side of the road; it’s not reported to law enforcement,” Ellison said. “Now, when somebody drives by it, they call 911 because they see this rollover vehicle or this accident, and they don’t see a person around. Their immediate thoughts are, ‘Did this person fall off the cliff? Or did they get washed down the river?'”
These anonymous 911 calls automatically trigger massive, multi-agency emergency responses, pulling deputies, paramedics, and search-and-rescue teams away from town for hours to investigate empty scenes.
“We come two-and-a-half hours out on a remote area, and there’s nobody around, and it’s because they never reported their accident,” Ellison explained. “So that takes viable resources out of the community where we are supposed to be responding to domestic violence, wrecks, those sorts of average-day crimes… It makes it very difficult for us to maintain law in a normal area.”
A Step Toward Accountability
Despite the ongoing friction, Sheriff Ellison noted a recent instance of cooperation that provides a glimmer of hope for the area’s preservation. Following a weekend of heavy trail use, the Sheriff’s Office posted images to social media showing massive amounts of litter scattered across Lower Eagle Creek.
The response from off-road community leaders was immediate.
“I did want to thank all the groups that had come up and picked up the amounts of trash that were left behind,” Sheriff Ellison noted. “We put a post out on Saturday night about trash being left behind. The group leaders of those groups that had come out originally came out the next day and cleaned up the creek. It is immaculately clean… I just wanted to give kudos to those that picked up all the trash the next day after the groups had left. Thank you.”
Moving forward, the Sheriff’s Office is pleading with all recreational visitors to take personal accountability so that the area remains accessible and safe. The agency has issued an ongoing directive to the off-road community: immediately cease drinking while operating any vehicle, accurately report all backcountry accidents to 911 to prevent phantom search missions, and strictly practice a philosophy of “pack it in, pack it out.”
“We do also want to remind you if you’re going to take stuff in, you need to take stuff out,” Ellison concluded. “So if you pack it in, you need to pack it up and leave our community prize gem here clean and safe.”
