Ghost Town Adventure - Fairbank, AZ

We have enjoyed our New Years Eve tradition so much, we decided to step it up a bit and go Ghost Town exploring every first Saturday of the month. For February, we went to Fairbank, AZ and hiked the path that took us to the Fairbank Cemetery and the old Grand Central Mill. It was a beautiful clear day and not too cold (after the severe cold that came through here recently, it is warming up nicely in the afternoons now)...perfect for hiking.

Here are pictures of our adventure, starting with Fairbank:

The Mercantile Building. The oldest surviving building in Fairbank, dating to 1882. Within its walls were a store, saloon, and post office.

Fairbank was family town, a center of local activity and commerce; sedate compared to the rowdiness of the mill towns of Millville, Contention, and Charleston. This town lived on after those mill towns died and the Tombstone mines flooded in the late 1880s. It made it through the 1887 earthquake and held on through the 1890 and 1894 floods. It remained a transportation hub until after World War I, when the price of copper dropped and both mines and the railroads decreased operations. The school closed in 1944. The number of railroad workers in town dwindled until the 1960s, when the Southern Pacific Railroad abandoned the Fairbank Station. The Depot was torn down in 1967. The last residents left in the mid 1970s.

Since it was only recently abandoned, many structures still remain today. I have another post with additional Fairbank pictures (at the end of the blog), so I will not post any more pictures of the town here.

Now on to the Cemetery and Grand Central Mill:

Part of the trail to the cemetery and Grand Central Mill.

The land around Fairbank.

The following pictures are of what's left of the Grand Central Mill. It was a typical silver processing stamp mill. Huge pistons crushed the rock, working day and night. Then the crushed ore was processed with mercury in amalgamating pans to bind the silver. Imagine the health effect of the toxic mercury on the mill workers. Their lives were short. (info taken from a pamphlet we got at Fairbank)

The back side of the mill is the only structure that survived.

A closeup of the back walls.

A hole in the wall.

Jessica examining the hole in the wall.

The next pictures are of the old cemetery. The cemetery is approximately 1/2 mile from the townsite. The graves are most likely town residents, but only three graves have names. Based on artifacts found there, this hilltop has been used by humans for centuries.

There are also great views of the San Pedro River Valley from the top of cemetery hill.

Climbing the switchback trail to cemetery hill.

Unmarked graves.

This grave had more modern tokens on it, including a full utensil set (fork, knife, spoon) and a stuffed sheep. I'm not sure what that means, but it was interesting to see.

One of the marked graves, though this cross had fallen and shattered.

The view of the San Pedro River Valley from cemetery hill.