Forest Lakes, AZ

Forest Lakes is a Coconino County community on the Mogollon Rim, where ponderosa forest and a chain of recreation lakes replace the desert scenery people often associate with Arizona. The settlement stretches across a broad, mostly national-forest landscape near Woods Canyon Lake, Bear Canyon Lake, Knoll Lake, and Black Canyon Lake. The Rim rises immediately south, dropping roughly 1,000 to 2,000 feet toward central and southern Arizona. That edge-of-the-plateau setting gives Forest Lakes its basic rhythm: summer cabins, fishing and boating, forest roads, and long stretches of pine between homes.

ATTRZakhari Volk / CC0

The community began with a very different economy. In 1939, the Denison family started mining manganese, and wartime demand kept the operation going into the 1960s. When mining faded, the family turned to logging, while residential development shifted toward recreation. Forest Lakes Estates began in 1964 and added ten more subdivision units by 1969 as people built vacation homes around the lakes. The area falls in the Chevelon Butte School District, which sends students to Heber-Overgaard schools, so education and larger errands reach beyond the forested community itself. Forest Lakes is a high-country Arizona place built from mining, timber, and lake country.