For decades the Pipeline OHV area, located on the eastern side of Globe, has been a popular spot with dirt bikers, side-by-siders and quad drivers, along with mountain bikers, joggers, hikers and dog walkers. Last month, a project to spruce up the area came to fruition, with improvements based on feedback from the local community.
The upgrades started with a restroom building, a brand new amenity at Pipeline that was delivered and installed December 12. This was one of the ideas to come from a 2022 community meeting hosted by the Tonto National Forest’s Globe Ranger District and the Tonto Recreation Alliance.
That meeting was held at Pipeline, whose off-road trails give access to popular Forest Service roads leading north into the foothills above Six Shooter Canyon and Ice House Canyon, and up to the Pinal Mountains.
“We had several people show up from the community, maybe about 15 or so, and they gave us their input,” said District Recreation Management Specialist Sheryl Cormack. “We talked about the area, how it was used, and what sort of facilities the community might want. One of the items that came out of that meeting was a toilet, and so we looked around for funding for that.”
Cormack said their search netted about $300,000 in federal funding through the Great American Outdoors Act {GAOA] of 2020, which established the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund to address a maintenance backlog in national parks, public lands and roads, national wildlife refuges, and Bureau of Indian Education-funded schools. “A lot of funding went to a lot of different [national] forests, and one of them was ours,” Cormack said.
Work on the new restrooms started December 9, when the contractor, a Phoenix firm named C2 Construction, began preparing the site. Four days later, Cormack and other Forest Service staff were there to see the delivery and installation of the building and toilets.
Another idea community members suggested in the 2022 meeting was improving the area around Pipeline’s four ramadas, and the District is also using the GAOA funds to make that happen.
“The ramadas are going to be refurbished with new picnic tables in the next couple of weeks, maybe next month,” Cormack said on December 12, the day the new restrooms were brought in. “We’re going to use some tables from Tonto Basin because they’re decommissioning their sites.”
The ramadas will also be getting new tin roofs and a fresh paint job, as the District replaces their current blue paint with a tan color to match the restroom building. “It’ll blend a little bit better with the environment,” said Cormack. “Right now they stand out and they’re really old-looking, so the contractor’s going to refurbish them, make them look a little bit cleaner.”
The improvements planned for Pipeline don’t stop there. Cormack said the District also has plans to add a three-paneled informational kiosk, including a map made by the Tonto Recreation Alliance on one panel. The second, she said, would probably contain regulatory information.
“Hopefully on another panel we’ll be able to do some interpretive stuff about the environment, how to protect the environment, maybe what kind of flora and fauna is out here, maybe the history,” said Cormack. “We haven’t really decided on the interpretive panel.”
“I feel really proud, and happy for the community,” she said of seeing the project finally come to fruition. “In the end, I think the visitors of the area are going to have a little nicer place to enjoy. It’s pretty exciting.”

David Sowders, who now lives in Globe, has been in southern Arizona since childhood and grew up in Tucson. David earned an associate of applied sciences degree from Eastern Arizona College. He has 10-plus years of experience as a newspaper reporter and editor in Safford and Globe, and his articles have won several Arizona Newspapers Association awards. Writing, hiking and discovering new places around Southern Arizona are some of his greatest joys.