Ghost Town Adventure - Millville, AZ

In continuing with our quest to visit local ghost towns, we hiked to Millville, AZ, which is located between Tombstone and Sierra Vista on Charleston Road.

Millville, along with Charleston across the San Pedro River, both sprung up in 1879 in response to the discovery of silver in Tombstone. The rich ore-bearing rock was processed with stamp mills. There were two stamp mills in Millville, the Corbin Mill and the Gird Mill.

There are still quite of few stone foundations and rock walls of the buildings in the town, though no complete structure is still standing. There are also the back walls of a couple of the mills still standing.

It was a nice hike and a beautiful day. Here are some of the pictures:

Along the trail to Millville:

A horse back rider is seen beside the ruins of the Corbin Mill:

One of the structures left in Millville:

The foundation of the Gird House with the Gird Mill behind it:

Another view of the Gird Mill:

The trail took us to two petroglyph sites located within the Millville Ghost town. Here are a couple of pictures of the drawings on the rocks left by the Hohokam Indians.

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.

Ghost Town Adventure

I love adventures. I love to see new sites and discover new places. However, I always seem to go far away (across oceans or state lines) to have these adventures. But there are SO MANY cool places just minutes from where I live and I never seem to take the time to go see them. Well, that all changed. On January 2, my mom, sister, and I decided to find some Ghost Towns nearby...there are dozens in my county alone (most are more ruins than standing structures, but they are still cool).

So we began our adventure in search of Contention City. We drove to the location that Google Map pointed us too, but all we found was the beginning of a trail to the Presidio Santa Cruz de Terrenate. We decided to make the 3 mile round trip hike. It was a beautiful day, bright and sunny with a cool breeze. Perfect for hiking.


The trail we began on met up with the San Pedro Trail (which used to be the train tracks for this area. The tracks have been removed, so it's now just the bed).

This next picture you can see the San Pedro trail from a distance. Notice the copper deposits left by the many trains that passed over this trail.

Once we got on the San Pedro Trail, we only had 1/4 mile left before we arrived at the Presidio. We didn't know what to expect when we got there, but we were eagerly anticipating exploring a Ghost Town.

Finally, we arrived.


We looked around, but all we could see was this structure. Something told us this was not the presidio.

The sign above was the beginning of another trail...this time it was a 1/2 mile circle to see the presidio. We were tired, but we had come this far, so we continued onward. We ran into the San Pedro River, which had some water following in it. It was very beautiful.

Finally, the trail took us into an area where the remains of a huge adobe structure still stood. The site was abandoned in 1781. The following is what is left of the chapel.

This is the remains of the commander's quarters.

There wasn't much left standing. The last plaque on the trail was titled "Abandonment" and it stated "The hardships of Terrenate -- climate, isolation, inadequate supplies, and successful Apache raids -- led Spain to abandon the site after only five years. While Terrenate dissolved back into the dessert landscape, other more successful Spanish forts and missions grew into major communities of the present Southwest."

We didn't know what the Presidio of Santa Cruz de Terrenate was before we went to find it, but when we arrived at our next Ghost Town, Fairbank, we found a model of the presidio. This is what it looked like back in 1781:

As I mentioned above, we also explored another Ghost Town called Fairbank. This is more like what I envisioned Ghost Towns to be...structures still standing but abandoned.

We ended our day by discovering a new restaurant in Bisbee, another really old town founded in 1880, but this one is still inhabited. It is a really cool town to explore.

So we had a very fun adventure and we didn't even have to travel very far to find these great discoveries. And there is still more to see.