Pine fence restored through partnerships
Payson Roundup (Nov 18, 2025) by David C. Bolla
About 500 man-hours of labor. Thousands of dollars in materials.
An Arizona Trail Association crew has completed a new pipe rail fence in Pine.
Over the course of eight Thursday morning sessions, between eight and 10 volunteers worked to replace a fence around the parking lot at the Pine Trailhead. The project to upgrade a wooden fence installed in 2020 which had already rotted resulted in 44 new gabion fence posts encircling the parking lot.
“The Arizona Trail Association kicked in a little money. Pine-Strawberry Fuel Reduction kicked in some. The money was used to buy rocks from Payson Concrete and the wire fencing from Tractor Supply,” said Shawn Redfield, Arizona Trail Association volunteer. Redfield said thousands of dollars’ worth of steel rail was provided by the Forest Service.
Fountain Hills-based Arizona Trail Association volunteers were joined by the PSFR Trail Crew Rock Stars over the course of the project.
“We had to haul these 20-foot things from Payson up to Pine. One of the Pine-Strawberry guys did that for us,” said Redfield.
Gabion fence posts are made by filling wire mesh with rocks or gravel. Volunteers worked together to fill the baskets. All but two of the 44 are four feet tall and two feet in diameter. The two final posts have a diameter of three feet.
The project was completed on Thursday, Oct. 30. All of the posts were installed and filled with rocks the week before, but final touches corrected minor imperfections and added caps.
Redfield said the project couldn’t have happened without the help of Pine-Strawberry Fuel Reduction and the Forest Service.
“These kinds of partnerships are how things get done now days,” said Redfield. “It really does take a partnership. Just as an example, we couldn’t haul the rails. Without somebody with a big trailer and time to do it – it came together.”
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