If it weren't for the fact that Box Canyon is mentioned in the guidebooks for hikers, it would undoubtedly be less noticed than it already is. Anza-Borrego Desert State Park has no signs to mark its entrance. People can and do walk right by it.
At Third Crossing (that's the Third Crossing of Coyote Creek as you come up the jeep trail from the end of the blacktop on DiGiorgio Road), a trail marked Lower Willows beckons you up a gradual incline about a quarter of a mile until you come to a trail marker directing you slightly to your left and down hill toward the embrace of the creek and its willows. At the trail marker, Box Canyon is to your right or north before you would go down the hill.
Lester Reed (author of Old Time Cattlemen and Other Pioneers of the Anza-Borrego Area) says the old cattlemen called it North Canyon, apparently because it runs due north. You could set your compass by it.
From the outside looking in, it is not pretty. Your first view of Box Canyon is of a short broad avenue of a wash jammed with rocks and boulders of various sizes, cactus and other shrubs, and a jumble of trails. A steep but comparatively low ridge is in the background. But how do you get back there? How do you make your way up or across the arroyos? How do you stay on course when it is impossible to walk more than a few feet in any direction without encountering a plant or boulder or wall of earth? Welcome to bushwhacking, and be sure to orient your map, preferably the Collins Valley topographic map of the 7.5 minute series.
As David Prescott Barrows put it, "The question that instantly arises in the mind of the visitor to the habitat of the [Cahuilla Indians] is, how can any people find here the satisfaction of their wants."
He may well have been looking at the entrance to Box Canyon when he wrote this. You get to a place like Box Canyon and you can't help but admire people like the Cahuilla who could survive out here. The high ground above Box Canyon may well have been a place where they hunted sheep. Certainly, the route out of Box Canyon connected the Coyote Creek Cahuilla with the Jackass Flat Cahuilla, and Cahuilla elsewhere in the Santa Rosa Mountains.
Sunset from Ridge above Box Canyon.
The walk through Box Canyon and over the ridge to Hidden Spring is not to be undertaken lightly. I found the trail description in Schad's Afoot and Afield in San Diego County to be helpful. Before leaving home, I spread my Collins Valley topographic map on the kitchen table and marked a knoll at two thousand seven hundred and twenty feet and a saddle at two thousand six hundred and fifty feet, in accordance with Schad's description. These marks helped me find my way.
I should say they would have helped me had I walked all the way to Rockhouse Canyon. Unfortunately, my hiking partner became ill as we crossed the ridge. In the middle of the afternoon, he set up his tent and got off his feet while I put down my pack and explored the area on foot.
I saw a lone sheep. Later, I came across a bone, apparently the leg bone of another sheep, with blood and a little fresh flesh still attached. I wondered if the mate of the lone sheep had died that day. The sunset that evening was beautiful.
This is walkers' country, and country for people who don't want a lot of company. The rocks, 
brush and gullies see to that. Most of the time, there are no trails. You just make your way as best you can, following your map and suggestions from the guidebooks.
The trail from Box Canyon across the mountains leads to Hidden Spring on a corner of Jackass Flat. About four miles away is the mine from which Nicolas Shwarz, it is said, once took about eighteen thousand dollars in gold.
From Hidden Spring, you can continue into the Santa Rosa Mountains, or you can turn south into Butler and finally Rockhouse Canyon and go south through Clark Valley, crossing back to the Borrego Valley by way of Alcoholic Pass.
On to Collins Valley
Related DesertUSA Pages
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
Villager Peak Walk
