When you drive through the refuge you are following Red Cloud Mine Road. This is a county road but it does not get much maintenance. It will not show up as a road on a map at least not past Red Cloud Mine but for some reason it will show up on some GPS units as a road that will take you all the way up to Interstate 10. You can go up that way but you better have one heck of a jeep or better yet an ATV. Many Jeeps do try to see how far they can go up the road and make it an all day adventure. We have been up the road as far as the Red Cloud Mine and seen the various sites along the way. There are caves the miners used to use as cabins. There are many mine shafts where they dug for silver. There is a cemetery and a sign where a town used to be back in the 1800's.
The more recent sights along the road include what is left of this white van. The story is that a group of illegal aliens came up the river back in the 80's and somehow got from the river to a waiting van. The van then took them up Red Cloud Mine Road where the border patrol gave chase to them. Why they were on that road is hard to understand since they would not have made it far anyway in a van. The unfortunate chase ended with the van sliding down a steep bank into a wash and rolling over a few times. The passengers didn't survive. The bullet holes in the van are from passing hunters who just like to shoot things up and not from the original chase.
Since the wall was built along the border by Yuma the "traffic" up the river has stopped. The "traffic" is almost nonexistent now in this part of Arizona. Its too bad the rest of the Arizona/Mexico border east of Yuma is not as secure. Now its mostly drug traffickers coming across and these people are far more dangerous than the poor illegals just looking for a job.
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