A Texas Pension Fund Paid $27 Million for This Hill. Parking Is Free.
Painted Hills Trails Park sits between Speedway and Anklam: 285 county acres, four miles of trail, and a $27 million land deal that never became houses.
Nineteen spaces on Anklam Road open onto 285 acres of saguaro slope that a Dallas retirement fund spent years trying to fill with houses. The land cost Pima County $7.5 million. Walking on it costs nothing.
A Dallas police and fire pension fund paid $27 million for this hillside in 2006. Today it is free to walk into. Four-tenths of a mile west of Players Club Drive, on the north side of Anklam Road, a paved lot holds nineteen cars — no fee booth, no ramada, no drinking fountain — and behind it lie 285 acres of saguaro-covered hillside that Pima County owns outright, the northern end of Tucson Mountain Park.
- $4.35M
- What the two parcels sold for across 2004 and 2005, per the county administrator
- $27M
- What the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System paid for the same ground in 2006
- 260 lots
- Cluster subdivision approved on the property in 2007 and never built
- $7.5M
- What Pima County paid for it in 2014, using voter-approved open space bonds
$4.35 Million, Then $27 Million, Then Nothing
Pima County Administrator C.H. Huckelberry laid the sequence out for the Board of Supervisors in a June 2014 memo, and it reads like a case study in what the last boom did to raw desert land. The ground was two separately owned parcels, approved between them for 147 units and never built on. Across 2004 and 2005 they changed hands in two transactions for $4.35 million total. In 2006, again in two transactions, they sold to a single investor — the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System — for $27 million. In 2007 the property was approved for a cluster subdivision of 260 lots. Then the market collapsed, and the fights began over whether Tucson Water would serve the place at all.
The Vote That Kept It Empty
Building on a dry parcel outside the city's service area meant getting Tucson to annex it and run pipe. In late May 2010 the City Council voted to do exactly that. Within about two weeks, after neighborhood and conservation groups pushed back, the council reversed itself unanimously and instructed the city attorney to pursue an alternative. The pension system responded with a $46 million claim against the city. The hillside stayed dry, and the 260 lots stayed lines on paper.
Seventeen Years of Trying to Buy It
The county had wanted this land well before the pension fund did. The 1997 open space bond proposal included it — $1.8 million allocated to Painted Hills and the neighboring Dos Picas property, money that ultimately went to Dos Picas. It was eligible again under the 2004 bond program, pencilled at about $4.5 million, and again no deal came together. When talks resumed after the crash the pension system was asking $10 to $12 million, then floated roughly $8.5 million. The county closed at $7.5 million: $3 million down from open space bonds, 5.75 percent interest on the $4.5 million balance, five annual payments of $1,061,028.62 — about $8.3 million all in. The Board amended its 2004 bond ordinance for the purchase on July 1, 2014 and took up the purchase agreement that August.
Four Miles of Trail and Not Much Else
Pima County calls this a natural open space park, and the phrase is doing real work: there are no restrooms, no water and no equestrian staging at the trailhead. What there is amounts to about four miles of non-motorized trail across the north end of the Tucson Mountains — a range the county has been assembling into a roughly 20,000-acre park since April 1929 — open to hikers, runners, mountain bikers and leashed dogs, sunrise to sunset. The county's wildlife list for the park runs to mule deer, bobcat, javelina, coyote and Gila monster, and its description leads with the saguaro stands rather than the views.
- Mosaic Trail (2 miles round trip, Wide tread, Walkers): The main trail, built wide rather than as singletrack. Pima County calls it an excellent facility for walkers, which in practice means two people can go side by side.
- Slingshot Trail (1.5 miles one way, Singletrack, Bikes allowed): The long singletrack. It and the Mosaic are what most people combine into a circuit rather than walking either one out and back.
- Monsoon Loop (1-mile loop, Singletrack): A one-mile singletrack loop — the shortest full circuit here, and the easiest add-on once you have walked the Mosaic.
- The Two Short Climbs (0.4 miles each, 380 feet of gain, Steep): Bactrian Summit Trail is four-tenths of a mile round trip and gains 380 feet. The Recoil Peak spur is the same distance and also steep. Both are short enough to tack on at the end.
September Is the Window
The National Weather Service closes out the Arizona monsoon season on September 30, and the weeks on either side of that date are when a west-side hillside like this one looks least like a rock pile: the washes have run, the slopes have greened, and none of it lasts. Nothing to reserve, no fee at any step — the constraints are daylight and nineteen spaces, and both argue for going early.
Quick reference (September 9, 2026): Painted Hills Trails Park, 3590 W. Anklam Road, Tucson 85745 — north side of Anklam, 0.4 miles west of N. Players Club Drive. Sunrise to sunset, no fee, paved parking for 19 vehicles, no restrooms or water, dogs on leash, no equestrian parking. Pima County sets the hours and rules and has changed them before.
What It Means on This Side of Town
For anyone weighing the west side, the useful part of this story is not the hike. It is that 285 acres between Speedway and Anklam are now county open space, bought with bond money whose stated purpose was conserving the saguaro-studded slopes visible from both roads. The 260 lots approved in 2007 died on a water vote in 2010 and were bought out four years later. That is a fixed western edge for everything east of it, and it is a fact no property listing has a field for — the kind of thing you find by driving Anklam until the houses run out.
Sources
Pima County — "Painted Hills Trails Park" — pima.gov/1287/Painted-Hills-Trails-Park — accessed September 9, 2026 (for the 285-acre natural open space park between Anklam Road and Speedway Boulevard, the sunrise-to-sunset hours, the approximately four miles of trails open to all non-motorized users, the Mosaic Trail at 2 miles round trip and built wider than the singletrack, the Slingshot Trail at 1.5 miles one way, the 1-mile Monsoon Loop, the Bactrian Summit Trail at 0.4 miles round trip with 380 feet of gain, the Recoil Peak spur at 0.4 miles round trip, leashed dogs, the saguaro stands, the mule deer, bobcat, javelina, coyote and Gila monster, and the park as the northern extent of Tucson Mountain Park).
Pima County — "Painted Hills Trailhead" — pima.gov/1372/Painted-Hills-Trailhead — accessed September 9, 2026 (for the address at 3590 W. Anklam Road, the location on the north side of Anklam 0.4 miles west of N. Players Club Drive, the paved parking area for 19 vehicles, the sunrise-to-sunset hours, and the absence of equestrian parking).
Pima County — "Tucson Mountain Park" — pima.gov/1272/Tucson-Mountain-Park — accessed September 9, 2026 (for the park's establishment in April 1929 and its approximate 20,000 acres).
Pima County Administrator C.H. Huckelberry — memorandum to the Board of Supervisors, "Painted Hills Property Acquisition," dated June 11, 2014, with the attached June 10, 2014 offer letter — filed under County Administrator Memoranda 2014 at pima.gov/3091/County-Administrator-Memoranda-2014 — accessed September 9, 2026 (for the two separately owned parcels approved for 147 units and never developed; the two transactions across 2004 and 2005 totalling $4.35 million; the 2006 sale of both to the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System for $27 million; the 260-lot cluster subdivision approved in 2007; the Great Recession collapse and the Tucson Water service controversy; the 1997 open space bond's $1.8 million allocation to Painted Hills and the neighboring Dos Picas property and its ultimate use on Dos Picas; the property's eligibility under the 2004 bond program at an estimated $4.5 million; the pension system's earlier $10 to $12 million ask and later approximately $8.5 million overture; and the agreed terms — a $7.5 million price, a $3 million initial payment from open space bonds, 5.75 percent interest on the $4.5 million balance, five annual payments of $1,061,028.62, a total of roughly $8.3 million, and the commitment to full payment in 2016 contingent on a bond election).
Pima County — Board of Supervisors ordinance amending Ordinance 2004-18, the 2004 bond implementation plan, filed as "Amendment to Pima County's 2004 Bond Ordinance for Painted Hills Property Acquisition" and adopted July 1, 2014 — filed under County Administrator Memoranda 2014 at pima.gov/3091/County-Administrator-Memoranda-2014 — accessed September 9, 2026 (for the amendment of the 2004 bond implementation ordinance to add the Painted Hills parcels between Speedway and Anklam, and for the stated benefit of conserving the saguaro-studded slopes visible along Speedway and Anklam). The Board's "Purchase Agreement for Painted Hills Property" memorandum is dated August 18, 2014 in the same index.
KOLD News 13 — "Tucson's City Council rejects Painted Hills annexation" — kold.com/story/12617517/tucsons-city-council-rejects-painted-hills-annexation/ — accessed September 9, 2026 (for the late-May 2010 vote to annex the property and supply water to it, the unanimous reversal about two weeks later instructing the city attorney to pursue an alternative solution, and the pension system's subsequent $46 million claim against the city).
National Weather Service, Tucson — "Monsoon" — weather.gov/twc/monsoon — accessed September 9, 2026 (for the Arizona monsoon season ending September 30).
All details are current as of September 9, 2026; park hours, parking capacity, trail conditions and county rules change, so confirm current information with Pima County before relying on any single figure. This post is for informational purposes only and is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase real estate. Kyle Berglund and Tierra Antigua Realty fully support and comply with the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Opportunity Act.
Topics
- Hidden Gems
- Painted Hills
- Tucson Mountain Park
- West Side
- Menlo Park
- Anklam Road
- Pima County
- Hiking
- Open Space
- Tucson