Start from 19 curated places around Cottonwood, AZ, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Merkin Vineyards Osteria
The Old Town osteria and tasting room of musician-turned-winemaker Maynard James Keenan, doing farm-to-table Italian with house-milled Arizona-grain pasta and breads, paired with the valley's high-elevation wines. The most serious food-and-wine experience in Cottonwood.
Pizzeria Bocce
Naples-certified wood-fired pizza in a transformed 1920s auto shop, where the chef trained in Italy turns out a dozen blistered pies on a daily-changing roster. Industrial-modern room, a bocce court out back, and the best pizza in the valley.
Trails & outdoors
Jail Trail
An easy, flat path from the old rock jail lot in Old Town down to the Verde River and on toward Dead Horse Ranch, shaded by cottonwoods and willows along the water. The simplest way to reach the river straight from downtown.
Verde River Greenway, Dead Horse Ranch State Park
Flat, easy trails winding through a dense gallery forest of Fremont cottonwoods along the Verde inside Dead Horse Ranch State Park, with fishing lagoons and one of the richest riparian bird habitats in the state. The accessible nature walk of the valley.
Things to do
Verde Canyon Railroad
A four-hour, 20-mile round trip from Clarkdale through a wild canyon reachable no other way, in vintage cars with open-air viewing platforms. Bald eagles, ancient cliff dwellings, and red-rock walls roll by; it's the signature experience of the Verde Valley.
Blazin' M Ranch
A Western-themed chuckwagon dinner and stage show on a ranch at the edge of Dead Horse Ranch, with a cowboy supper, live cowboy music and comedy, and a frontier-town midway beforehand. Corny in the best family way, and a genuine evening out.
Landmarks & sights
Tuzigoot National Monument
A 110-room hilltop pueblo the Sinagua people built and lived in for some 300 years starting around 1000 AD, crowning a ridge over the Verde River with views across the whole valley. The short loop through the masonry rooms and the small museum of recovered pottery make it the area's essential history stop.
Old Town Cottonwood
A few restored blocks of 1920s storefronts that have become the Verde Valley's eating-and-drinking heart, packed with wine tasting rooms, restaurants, and shops. Walkable, low-key, and the reason food-and-wine travelers now stop in Cottonwood at all.