Ghost Town Tours

Michael was in charge of the adventure on TH on his day off.

This sign is a pretty good hint at what we spent our day doing.

We started just out of town at Brunckow's Cabin.  The bloodiest cabin in Arizona history.  Bronckow, a German immigrant and employee of a regional mining company, established a claim in the late 1850's  just south of what would later become Tombstone. Allegedly Mexican laborers working the mine attacked the crew. Just over 20 years since the slaughter of Brunkckow and his companions, an additional seventeen men met their fates on the property.  Today it is said to be haunted.

or at least visited by these good looking guys

and the mine.

Didn't realize when in said animals next 7 miles that we were probably on somebody's ranch.

Then we saw this sign - had to take a picture

Then we saw this one and knew we had to stop by.

rattlesnake headband anyone?  Should've got it - I'd have won the white elephant party this year.

For April, our fav. photographer.

In honor of the drink Michael keeps giving up.

Back on the trail - we found the 1910 Jail in Gleeson, AZ.  Gleeson and the hills at the southern end of the Dragoon Mountains had long been mined by the Indians for turquoise.  White men came in the 1870's and found copper, lead, and silver. Gleeson changed the name from Turquoise to Gleeson.  He sold out in 1914, but it continued to provide copper until after WWI when prices fell.

and its wagon outside

what's left of the school - guess not much has changed = we spend more money on our prisons than on our schools.

I think this is Courtland, AZ - it is the only community on the Ghost Town Trail that is completely deserted.  It has only spase remnants.

another well built jail.

Last stop: Pearce, AZ and it's famous cemetary.  It's named for Jimmie Pearce, he and his wife saved up and bourhg a piece of the great outdoors.  One day he found free gold on the side of hill.  The town grew at the base of his mine.  He sold the Commonwealth for $250,000.  His wife remembering harder times included a clause that allowed her to run a boarding house until 1930. There is still a mercantile - it's for sale if anyone is interested.

The reason for the soldiers buried here is because this was the Middlemarch Road, a trail across the Dragoon Mountains taken by soldiers trekking between Fort Bowie and Fort Huachuca in the 1870's and 80's.