By Ken Cohen — When was the last time you took a road trip that included Douglas, Arizona? Never you say? Douglas is a small town in southeastern Arizona with a population of 16,000. It is a border town; it shares a common boundary with its sister city, Agua Prieta, which is on the Mexican side of the border just beyond that thing we call “The Wall”. You cannot get to Douglas by commercial airline, or train, or bus. It is literally hundreds of miles from any major population center.

So, who in their right mind would think it a good idea to spend a year of their life, and many thousands of their very own dollars, to promote the first ever gravel bike race beginning and ending in Douglas, Arizona? Mike Miller, that’s who.

Miller is a 69-year-old human cyclone. He is tall and lean, built like a guy who rides his bicycle a lot, mostly for long distances and frequently up and down steep terrain. Raised in Fargo, North Dakota Mike discovered cycling at the age of 13. It soon proved to be his ticket to explore the world, beginning with the vast farmlands of the Red River Valley in North Dakota and Minnesota.

Mike moved to Denver in the mid-1970s to attend college. At the time Colorado was becoming a mecca for professional bicycle racing. After graduating from Denver University in 1978 with a degree in hotel and restaurant management, Mike spent the next 40 years in the food service industry and corporate restaurant management. During this time Mike’s love affair with cycling continued through his participation in major cycling events like the Red Zinger Classic/Coors International, showcasing world-class men’s and women’s cycling, becoming the fourth biggest race on the world cycling calendar, and the single biggest women’s stage race ever held.

In 1996 Mike combined his experience in the food service industry with his passion for cycling: he opened the HandleBar & Grill restaurant in Denver, a bicycle themed restaurant and shrine to all things bicycle, which he owned and operated until 2007. This period coincided with the cycling craze spawned during the Lance Armstrong era when Mike rubbed shoulders with many of the big names in the cycling world and became inspired to organize his own local mountain biking races and community events. After he sold the HandleBar & Grill, Mike opened a pizza shop in Denver, Basil Docs, which he operated until 2021 when he relocated to Tucson.

In Tucson, Mike discovered gravel bike racing when he competed in the Belgian Waffle Ride in Cave Creek, Arizona in 2023, and he became hooked. You may not be familiar with the concept of a “gravel bike”. It’s the latest cycling craze to reach our shores. A gravel bike is sort of a cross between a mountain bike and a road bike. It is slightly longer, lower, and more flexible than a road bike; it has a more upright body position; and tires that are wider with more knobby tread patterns rather than the slick tread of a road bike. A gravel bike is built for off-road, more technical riding while a road bike is built for paved terrain.

Gravel bikes have become one of the fastest growing sectors in the cycling industry. After participating in the Belgian Waffle Ride, Miller began thinking that the world could use another gravel bike event some place in sunny southern Arizona. After researching the issue Miller became convinced that Douglas Arizona was the perfect spot.

So, in November 2023 Miller began plotting, scheming and obsessing about an event that would, one year later on November 16, 2024 become the Inaugural Apacheria Gravel Bike Race, enticing 147 adventurous souls to ride either 38, 68, or 89 miles, take your pick, up and down a canyon road aptly named the Geronimo Trail.

Douglas, Arizona is a two-hour drive from Tucson and three plus hours from Phoenix. Friday, November 15, 2024, dawned as a beautiful sunny November day in Southern Arizona, ideal conditions for setting up the event. The temperature in Douglas was 70 degrees, and in the dry desert climate it was as comfortable wearing a T-shirt as it was a sweatshirt.

Race Report:

Virtually the entire bike race is on the Geronimo Trail. The first four miles of the course is on pavement; the remainder is on a gravel Cochise County road of varying conditions. At mile 14 the race course enters the John Slaughter Ranch, which was part of a 73,000 acre land grant purchased by Ignacio Perez for 90 pesos in 1855. That seems like a modest price to pay for 73,000 acres until you factor in that the property was snatched from his grasp by Apache Indians before he could even lay his head down to rest for a night. The Slaughter Ranch is a beautifully preserved oasis in the midst of a desert landscape, teeming with wildlife and ponds attracting numerous types of birds.

The race then enters the San Bernadino Wildlife Refuge, a 2,369-acre site along the border with Mexico. It was established in 1982 to protect what remained of the unique wetlands of the San Bernardino range, historically considered the largest and most extensive in the region. This large marsh serves as a migratory corridor for wildlife between the mountain ranges of Mexico to the Rocky Mountains of Arizona and New Mexico.

From the Refuge the race continues to the entrance to the Coronado National Forest before making a U-turn to begin the slog back to town. The race ends with a trip through town, past the border crossing, along The Great Wall for a mile or so, and then returning on Airport Road to the finish line at the Douglas Municipal Airport.

The winner of the Men’s Long Course was Kennett Peterson, a professional tri-athlete from Tucson, who bested second place finisher, Scott Simmons of Durango, by one second in a nail biter of a finish. Peterson’s time was 4:41.52. A video of the Apacheria will be ready to view on the race website by late January 2025.

On the woman’s side, Helen Williams, also of Tucson, won the Women’s Long Course in a time of 6:25.20, followed by Emily Reynolds who finished in 6:59.41.

In the Medium course (68 miles) the top men’s finisher was Bill Karras with a time of 3:38.2, and the top women’s finisher was Lauren Hall in 3:58.10.

In the Short course (38 miles) Collin Sowers was the top male rider finishing in 2:16.34, and Tricia Senft was the fastest female rider at 2:47.51.

Tinker Juarez made a guest appearance at the race. Juarez, is a California native and a wunderkind on two wheels. From an early age Tinker dominated BMX bike races in Southern California in the 1970s and 80s, and competed in the Olympics. He then went on to achieve similar results in the world of mountain bike racing in the early 2000s. He is a legend in the world of BMX and Mountain Biking, dominating world events during a 30+ year career.

More on Douglas, Arizona:

Douglas is a 125-year-old rural Arizona town that was once a thriving mecca. Located in the southeastern part of the state, bordering both New Mexico and Mexico, and in the heart of the area’s open grassy lands, Douglas was the perfect place for roundups of the region’s largest cattle ranchers. The town has very wide streets so that while steering your horse drawn carriage you can easily make a U-ie without impeding traffic. Douglas has numerous large buildings downtown which accommodated a thriving economy of ranchers, farmers, businessmen, miners and merchants.

Douglas was first inhabited by Apache Indians and Spanish explorers as early as the 1600s. But development of the town began in earnest in the early 1900s when the Dodge Phelps Corporation, an international mining company, built a smelter plant in Douglas to process the copper ore it mined in nearby Bisbee, 17 miles west of Douglas.

In the early 1900s Douglas held such promise that its business leaders joined forces in 1907 to build the Gadsden Hotel, a stately five story, 160 room hotel, featuring a magnificent lobby with solid white Italian marble floors. A grand staircase leads to the mezzanine, which is crowned with a 42-foot stained glass window mural overlooking the lobby lit by stained glass skylights.

The Gadsden Hotel dominated the downtown area of this newly emerging frontier border town, but the hotel would have been equally at home in New York or Paris. The Gadsden was the heart and soul of the Douglas business community, with deals small and large consummated in its lobby for decades. The Douglas economy took a blow when the smelter shuttered in 1987, but the community has been on a successful decades long journey back ever since.

The hotel served as an overnight home to numerous celebrities, writers, Hollywood film stars, ranchers and businessmen. The Gadsden Hotel likes to boast that in 1916 Pancho Villa, the Mexican revolutionary, rode his horse through the hotel lobby and up the marble stairway to the mezzanine in protest after his troops were defeated in a nearby battle. Pancho’s horse took out a chunk of marble on the staircase, which is still visible today.

The Gadsden Hotel was the perfect backdrop for the Inaugural Apacheria Gravel Bike Race. It served as the welcoming center for the 147 entrants, their spouses, children and support teams. For 48 hours it was Command Central for Mike Miller and his well-seasoned race crew and volunteers, and was home to the racers right up through the awards ceremony.

In case you are curious the best room in the hotel is the Governor’s Suite, a 600 square foot giant of a hotel room with windows on two sides overlooking the hotel lobby. The room was very clean, had a comfortable king size bed, two televisions (!), two couches and a desk, but was somewhat dated and in need of a spruce up.

If you arrive in Douglas with time to spare before the race, consider visiting the Art Car World Museum, which ranks very high on Tripadvisor’s Top Ten List of Things-to-Do in Douglas. It’s a short walk a few blocks from the hotel. You need to book a visit in advance as staffing is limited. The museum is such a great find, especially if you are lucky enough to get a private tour led by Hunter Mann. Hunter is on the Board of Directors of the museum, and when he is not shooting a film in some exotic location around the world, he volunteers his time as a laborer, tour guide, fund raiser, and the most wildly enthusiastic promoter of car art and the Art Car World Museum.

How to describe an art car? When we think of a work of art, we often have in mind a painting drawn on a canvas. With an art car the car itself is the canvas. The artist begins with a functioning vehicle, be it a car, truck, van or bus; think VW beetle, GMC van, Chevy pickup or anything in between. The car artist then spends years transforming the vehicle into a (drivable) work of art. It may be a vehicle with your deceased wife’s jewelry affixed to every square inch (no kidding); or covered in 1,400 blue horses, one for every time its creator, a recovering alcoholic, wanted a drink; or covered in scrap metal; or disguised as a jungle landscape with various animals wandering across the hood, trunk and roof. Or it could be a van with 2000 cameras affixed to the vehicle, including a functioning camera on each corner which clandestinely captures the jaw-dropping expressions of people observing the vehicle up close for the first time.

The Art Car World Museum is a work in progress. It is housed in a 100-year-old, two-story, 15,000 square foot warehouse which has been under renovation for the past five years. It currently houses 23 remarkable works of car art. Once construction of the museum is complete there will be more than 40 such cars at which to marvel. This museum is guaranteed to put a smile on your face and keep it there for however long you choose to spend gawking at these marvelous works of art.

And then, of course, there is the bike race itself, consisting of three courses: the short (38 miles), the medium (68 miles), and the long (89 miles). Promptly at 8:00 A.M. on the morning of November 16, 2024 the race started at the entrance to the Douglas Municipal Airport, which has its own remarkable story you are not going to believe: This tiny airport, which has not had any commercial airline flight in who knows how many years, was dedicated, on June 5, 1933 by Eleanor Roosevelt herself, as “the first international airport in the United States” (true story). After dedicating the airport guess where Mrs. Roosevelt went on to spend the night? At the Governor’s Suite in the Gadsden Hotel, of course.

So, Get Your Gravel On (GYGO) and Giddy Up to Douglas and the border lands of Southeast Arizona this Fall, November 15, 2025. Details: www.BorderLandsGravel.com.

Race Information:

November 15 — Borderlands Gravel, Douglas, AZ, Three courses – 38 / 68 and 100 miles. Working with the Border Communities to create an international ‘neutral’ Parade Lap for the long course rides only – transitioning through the Port Of Entry for about 1 KM. Truly an International Gravel Event – Collaboration between Douglas, AZ and Agua Prieta, MX.New and improved start / finish area – In front of The Gadsden Hotel, Mike Miller, 720-231-0521, [email protected], http://BorderLandsGravel.com

Bisbee is a former rough and tumble mining town which has transformed itself into a charming tourist area filled with art galleries, trinket shops, restaurants, and hotels, and worthy of an overnight stay if you happen to be in the neighborhood. Bisbee is a good alternative if the Douglas hotels are booked.