Tortilla Flat is a tiny settlement on the Apache Trail, in the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix, with a population that can be counted in single figures and a reputation far larger. It began as a stagecoach stop on the road built in 1905 to carry materials to the construction site of Roosevelt Dam, and today it consists of a restaurant, a saloon, a general store and a gift shop, all in a cluster of wooden buildings with a western look. Inside the saloon, the walls are covered with dollar bills, thousands of them, signed and stapled up by visitors, and the bar stools are saddles.
The mountains around it are rough, volcanic and full of legend. The Superstitions are said to hold the Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine, a treasure supposedly hidden by a prospector named Jacob Waltz in the nineteenth century, and people have been searching for it, and sometimes dying in the attempt, for more than a century. The scenery is a vivid desert, with saguaro cactus on the slopes, jagged cliffs and canyons that glow orange and red at sunset. Spring wildflowers, after a wet winter, carpet the hills with yellow and purple.
The Apache Trail, Arizona State Route 88, is the road that matters. It leaves Apache Junction and climbs through twisting curves, past Canyon Lake, a deep blue reservoir in a red canyon, to Tortilla Flat, and the pavement is narrow with tight bends and steep drops. Beyond the village, the road turns to gravel for around thirty kilometres, with narrow shelves cut into cliffs, steep grades and a famous switchback section that is unnerving in a car and demanding on a motorcycle. Check conditions before going on, because the surface can be rough or washed out after rain, and it is not for the inexperienced.
The restaurant serves chilli, burgers and a prickly pear ice cream that is a house speciality, and the place is crowded on weekends, with bikers and tour buses competing for parking. Summer temperatures are dangerous, often above forty degrees, so go in the cooler months, from October to April. The evenings are cool and the stars are brilliant, and a pause on the terrace with a cold drink is the right way to end the climb.