Campground Overview:
Oxbow Recreation and Wildlife Area provides RV and tent camping sites, a boat launch, and a day use area on old river channel (oxbow) of the Colorado River. The site is heavily used on summer and holiday weekends, and is popular with winter visitors.
Campsites:
The site is located approximately 23 miles south of Blythe, CA and 68 miles northwest of Yuma, AZ.
From I-10: Exit at Neighbours Blvd. /CA-78 in Blythe, California, heading south on Highway 78.
From I-8: Exit north on Ogilby Rd. Turn right on Highway 78 heading north. The site is approximately 3 miles south of Palo Verde, California, at Colorado River mile 100. Turn east onto the gravel road at sign marked “Colorado River.” Oxbow is ? mile east of Highway 78.
Campground at a Glance
Level: |
Dispersed |
Season: |
Year-Round |
Nearby City: |
Yuma |
Fishing: |
Colorado River |
Campground Website: |
Oxbow Recreation and Wildlife Area |
Campground Map: |
N/A |
Reservations: |
First-come, first-served basis |
Location: |
Nearby Attractions and Activities:
Cibola National Wildlife Refuge encompasses both the historic Colorado River channel, as well as a channelized portion constructed in the late 1960’s. Along with these main water bodies, several important backwaters are home to many species of wildlife that reside in this portion of the Sonoran Desert. Because of the river’s life sustaining water, wildlife thrives in this environment where temperatures reach 120 degrees in the summer and the average rainfall is two inches per year.
The greenbelt of the Colorado River serves as an important migratory corridor for a host of birds making their thousand-mile journey through this area. Here, western and Clark’s grebe chicks ride the backs of their parents as they cruise along a shoreline under the branches of cottonwood and willow trees, rookeries for great blue herons and egrets. The tall trees offer colorful migratory songbirds like the vermillion flycatcher a place to perch and watch for an insect meal. Ground dwelling birds like Gamble’s quail and roadrunners dart between river vegetation looking for cover from overhead predators in search of prey, specifically golden eagles and peregrine falcons. Elsewhere on the refuge, moist soil units and wildlife crops offer nutrient-rich tubers, grains and seedlings, important sources of winter food for Canada and snow geese.
Kofa National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1939 for the protection of desert bighorn sheep and other native wildlife following a 1936 campaign by the Arizona Boy Scouts. Major Frederick R. Burnham, a frontiersman turned conservationist, observed that populations of bighorn sheep were sharply declining and appealed to the Boy Scouts to take up the cause. For two years, more than 10,000 boy Scouts and their leaders campaigned to protect bighorn sheep through a “save the bighorns” poster contest, talks, and dramatizations on the radio and at school assemblies. As a result of the campaign, land was set aside for the establishment of Kofa Game Range (as the refuge was originally known).
Blythe Intaglios, often called America’s Nazca Lines, are a series of gigantic geoglyphs found fifteen miles north of Blythe California in the Colorado Desert. In the Southwestern United States alone, there are over 600 intaglios (anthropomorphic geoglyphs), but what separates the ones near Blythe is their size and intricacy. In total, there are six figures in three different locations, all within 1,000 feet from one another, situated on two mesas. The geoglyphs depict drawings of humans, animals, objects, and geometric shapes, all of which can be seen from the air.
The Blythe geoglyphs were first discovered on November 12th, 1931 by army air corps pilot George Palmer while flying from the Hoover Damn to Los Angeles. His discovery led to a survey of the area, which resulted in the huge figures becoming classified as historical landmarks and referred to as “Giant Desert Figures.” Lacking funds due to the Depression, it would take until the 1950s to investigate the site further.
Nearby Campgrounds:
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