Willcox Playa, National Natural Landmark dry lake in Cochise County, Arizona, United States

Willcox Playa is a dry lake bed in the Sonoran Desert, roughly 8 miles wide by 10 miles long and covering about 40 square miles. Its flat, pale tan surface shows faint horizontal bands of sediment, with shallow water and low green vegetation along the lower edge. Distant blue-grey mountains line the far side, and scattered shrubs grow in sandy soil in the foreground.

Willcox Playa is the remnant of Lake Cochise, a Pleistocene pluvial lake. The dry bed covers about 40 square miles (100 km2), roughly 8 by 10 miles, in the northern Sulphur Springs Valley. It was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1966 for its fossil pollen, sandhill cranes and tiger beetles. Part of the bed has served as a military bombing range, now used by the Electronic Proving Ground at Fort Huachuca.

Each January the town of Willcox hosts the Wings Over Willcox birding festival, timed to the thousands of sandhill cranes that roost on the playa. The Willcox Playa Wildlife Area, managed by the Arizona Game and Fish Department, draws birders to its shores.

You can reach the site via state highways near the town of Willcox, with access points scattered around the perimeter. Some areas remain off-limits to visitors because of military operations in the region.

The playa holds the greatest diversity of tiger beetles in the United States, a fact that helped earn it National Natural Landmark status in 1966. The designation also cited fossil pollen preserved underground and the thousands of sandhill cranes that roost here.