The Red Rock Pass, Explained

Where the Red Rock Pass works

At the Forest Service trailheads, which is most of what you came for: Cathedral Rock, Bell Rock Pathway, Courthouse Vista, Boynton Canyon, Dry Creek, Mescal, Fay Canyon, Little Horse, Doe Mountain and Bear Mountain, Huckaby, Jim Thompson, Midgley Bridge, Yavapai Vista, Baldwin, Honanki, Palatki, Crane Petroglyph and others — around nineteen sites on the Forest Service's published list.

You display it on the dashboard. An America the Beautiful pass — including the Senior, Access, Military and 4th Grade versions, and the legacy Golden Age and Golden Access passes — substitutes for it at every one of these.

Buy from a trailhead kiosk (they take cards), the Sedona Chamber Visitor Center, the Red Rock Visitor Center (day and weekly only, not annual), or in advance on Recreation.gov, which asks for your licence plate.

Where it emphatically doesn't — the $15 sites

This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in Sedona, and it's a reasonable one to have: these sites are on national forest land, so surely the national forest pass applies. It doesn't. They're operated by a private concessionaire under separate fee authority, and each site's own Forest Service page says so in as many words — that the Red Rock Pass and America the Beautiful pass are not accepted.

Call of the Canyon / West Fork — $15 per vehicle (up to 5 people), $4 walk-in. 7:00am–dusk April–September; 8:00am–dusk October–March. Currently closed by fire order.

Crescent Moon Ranch / Red Rock Crossing — $15 per vehicle, $25 weekly, $50 annual, $4 walk-in. This is the classic Cathedral Rock reflection view, so a lot of photographers meet this rule the hard way.

Grasshopper Point — $15 per vehicle, $4 walk-in. Currently closed by fire order.

Banjo Bill — closed for public safety through January 2027.

Beaver Creek and Lower Lake Mary — same system.

If you're visiting more than two of these, the $50 Coconino Hospitality Annual Pass covers them. Note that some guides still quote $12 per vehicle; that's a stale figure from before the current schedule.

Slide Rock is a different system again

Slide Rock State Park is Arizona State Parks, not the Forest Service. No federal pass and no Red Rock Pass works there.

$30 per vehicle (1–4 people) May through September; $20 per vehicle October through April; $5 per additional person; children under 6 free. Card is preferred and cash needs exact change. There's no walk-in or drop-off option — you must arrive in a vehicle.

Hours run 8:00am–6:00pm from late January to late November, with entry closing an hour before. The lot fills, and the park explicitly prohibits queueing along the driveway or highway when it's full.

One current note: the Oak Creek swim area at Slide Rock has been closed on account of the Pocket Fire. Check the park's own page before driving up.

What happens if you don't display one

Parking in a fee area without a valid displayed pass is a federal citation under 36 CFR Part 261. Rangers do check.

We're deliberately not quoting a dollar figure. The number you'll see repeated online — $55, rising to $100 if contested unsuccessfully — traces to a 2010 court case, not to a current published fee schedule, and we couldn't find a 2026 Forest Service page stating today's amount. Assume it costs meaningfully more than the $5 you saved.

For anything genuinely ambiguous, the Red Rock Ranger District is (928) 203-2900.