Arizona Republic (April 22, 2026) by Joan Meiners

One week before Earth Day, on April 15, the Department of Homeland Security convened a Zoom call with the Arizona Trail Association to explain that the agency had ordered the southernmost mile of the Arizona National Scenic Trail closed so that contractors could blast and grade the earth through Coronado National Memorial to make way for a double-layered border wall.

The trail may reopen in late 2027 at the junction of Yaqui Ridge Trail and Joe’s Canyon Trail, according to estimates from Trump administration officials. Hikers could then continue toward the southern terminus of the approximately 800-mile trail stretching between Utah and Mexico — but only to within about 500 feet of the second barrier. With no specific design plan released, the total area of impact within the national park site is not yet clear.

Beyond that buffer, civilians will not be allowed to approach the border in this region, which the administration announced in November will now be marked by two rows of 30-foot-high steel barriers separated by a 150-foot-wide road for patrol vehicles and security personnel. And trail sojourners will never again have access to border monument 102, which has served as the start or end point for hikers undertaking the full Arizona Trail. That will soon be ceded to the Mexico side of the wall.

“DHS has actually been very communicative with us about these changes,” Matt Nelson, executive director of the Arizona Trail Association, told the Arizona Republic late last week. “But the updates have all been bad.”

The ATA is already working on plans for an alternate southern terminus for the trail. It will likely sit atop Coronado Peak, about a mile from the border and a short detour off the current route. Instead of being in the style of other border monuments, the organization will work with the same artist who designed the rock tower marking the Utah end of the trail so that the two are more similar. Nelson sounded excited about this, calling the opportunity for artistic symmetry a single bright spot in a terrible situation.

But he and others remain concerned about what the landscape destruction and loss of hiker access to a swath of public lands through Coronado National Memorial — and the environmental laws that were waved to make way for blasting and border wall construction — says about the stability of protections in other beloved and publicly-owned places.

This particular memorial, being truncated by a divider, marks the place where the first major expedition of European explorers crossed into what is now the American Southwest and began to settle there.

Wildlife face new survival threats from border wall

In modern times, the region is not known to be an area with much migrant or drug traffic. It is remote, rugged, hostile and pristine, with sparse water, high summer heat and crossings by diverse wildlife. Because of this, environmental activists worry the border wall will make little difference to homeland security while greatly impacting the natural territories and water access for wide-ranging species like jaguars, mountain lions, javelina and ocelots.

Trail cameras have already captured these animals unable to squeeze through the spaces between existing border wall barriers to join their mates or kin on the other side.

“(The Department of Homeland Security has) been moving very fast, working at night. They own it out there and they’re doing whatever they want,” said Kate Scott, an artist and borderlands resident who has staged protests at the border with activists holding up masks depicting these animals trapped on the wrong side of the wall.

“It’s a real pressure for me,” Scott said. “I think about these animals every day. What did they do to deserve this? Until you see the wall, you don’t really get a feel for it.”

In anticipation of border monument 102 also being sequestered into foreign lands by a completed wall, many in the Arizona Trail community have made one last pilgrimage since that plan was announced in November to what has been a symbol of personal victory for thousands of hikers. Nelson was among the trail users who posted photos and memories of being at its border terminus on social media last week.

The construction area affecting the final mile of the Arizona Trail through Coronado National Memorial has not been declared a militarized zone, Nelson said. But with the Trump administration announcing last year that 140 miles of federal lands along Arizona’s border with Mexico between Yuma and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument would be put under military control as a National Defense Area, he isn’t sure it won’t be.

Wall puts new restrictions on hikers across the Southwest

Already, other popular long hiking trails with one end at the border, like the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail, have fallen under similar defense area designations established by the second Trump administration. The Pacific Crest trail reaches its southern end in Campo, California, and the southernmost point on the Continental Divide Trail is at the Crazy Cook Monument in a remote area of New Mexico.

In February, the Pacific Crest Trail Association posted that, because the area near the finishing monument is now considered a military installation, hikers would not be permitted to touch the border wall. A month later, they posted an update that hikers would be allowed to take a photo near the wall if they followed specific procedures and were prepared to show identification.

CDT southbound finishers are now required to obtain clearance from the U.S. Army Base at Fort Huachuca before entering the 100,000-acre zone of borderlands that was transferred to military control in April 2025 and that overlays the final mile of the trail. This process was originally only available to U.S. citizens but international hikers have since been invited to submit a request that involves passing a background check.

The Trump administration may be planning additional barriers in the form of a permit system where hikers must file an application in advance of approaching the southern ends of national trails, Nelson said, further chipping away at the ease of access to what many view as a peak lifetime experience of freedom on public lands.

At the same time, the Arizona Legislature has so far failed to deliver on financial support for the Arizona Trail, which some see as a broader symbol of state leaders’ backing for public lands and trail access. The second Trump administration has entertained several attempts from members of Congress to sell off millions of acres of public lands or transfer them to state control, a financially infeasible option that a recent analysis predicted would result in privatization and loss of public access.

Nelson worked with state Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, this year to introduce Senate Bill 1041, which proposed to spend $500,000 from the state general fund on construction and maintenance along the state’s National Scenic Trail. With the sponsorship of Rogers, a conservative, and public lands being an enduringly popular bipartisan issue, he had hope.

But opponents amended the bill to a limit of $100,000 before it stalled out so far in the appropriations process. Gov. Katie Hobbs may still write some support for the trail into her budget, Nelson said. And given her recent declaration of April 4 as, henceforth, “Arizona Public Lands Day,” it seems she sees its value.

A single appropriation will likely not be enough to cover the many needed maintenance projects along a statewide route that is increasingly damaged by wildfires, floods, grazing, drought and vanishing resources from decimated federal land management agencies. The Arizona Trail Association also relies on donations, fundraisers, member fees and merchandise sales to support its staff and trail access activities.

Advocates decry waiver of environmental laws

On top of climate change-related threats, federal funding cuts and border wall corridors converted to National Defense Areas, the trail also faces steps by the Trump administration to erode an array of bedrock environmental laws — including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and more. Weakening these policies could place vast common areas currently protected as species habitat, critical watersheds or sensitive areas in the crosshairs of leaders eager to privatize them.

All of this has public lands advocates worried about what safeguards remain that military action can’t bypass and that lawmakers will take a real stand to protect.

“A historic national park site and irreplaceable wildlife corridor are being bulldozed and dynamited, barreling straight through Coronado National Memorial,” Sanober Mirza, Arizona Program Manager at the National Parks Conservation Association, told The Republic.

“Coronado protects one of the last wildlife corridors on the border, connecting rare wildlife like jaguars and ocelots to habitat in the neighboring Huachuca Mountains,” Mirza said. “The administration is rushing construction ahead, waiving virtually every environmental and cultural protection law in the process. This will inflict irreversible damage on a protected public landscape.”

For now, hiker access to the final mile of the Arizona Trail to the Mexican border is blocked off — by a single park bench dragged across the Yaqui Ridge Trail just past its intersection with Joe’s Canyon Trail near the historic site where European explorers first entered the region.

Progress on border wall construction has progressed rapidly since The Republic previously reported from this location and from border monument 102 in late November, with additional sections of wall in place west of the trail’s southern terminus as far as the eye can see.

On Friday, April 17, caution tape tied across the park bench blocking access to the southernmost mile of the Arizona Trail flapped and broke in the wind. Three-quarters of a mile away, the nearby Montezuma Pass parking lot was quiet.

At sunset, a border security guard hurried past the closed trail junction, scrambled up a rocky slope through blooming ocotillo, and pulled out his binoculars to scope a hilltop view into Mexico.

 

To read the article online, complete with photos and video, click here.