Dos Cabezas, Arizona: An Ideal Destination from the Old West

Tombstone, OK Corral, Cochise's Stronghold, Fort Bowie and old Fort Huachuca are names that carry with them a colorful history, something southern Arizonans rightfully share with pride.

While nearly everyone knows the story behind the OK Corral, there are dozens of similar stories sprinkled throughout southern Arizona. Some involve sturdy men toiling underground until that fateful morning when the shaft caved in - like Cerro Colorado, where fighting broke out only after the native American shift of workers were killed - while others center on a town's demise thanks to a cholera outbreak or Indian uprising. In one remote, now abandoned town, the husband and wife who ran the general store were killed and robbed for the gold in their teeth. The subsequent owners, fresh off the train from the east where dental hygiene was honed to a precious-metal science, were killed in identical fashion less than a year later.

Rumor has it the teeth, or more accurately gold, wound up buying libation in an Arivaca bar, less than a dusty day's ride away.

Listen to the wind's whistle. Visit the graveyard and watch the monsoon roll in. Get a little dust on your boots and take in the sights. You won't believe how much fun visiting the rotting timbers, broken walls and overgrown paths of a southwestern ghost town can be.

One of my favorite haunts is the city of Dos Cabezas. Drive I-10 east to Willcox, then turn southeast on State Route 186. It's only a couple hours from Tucson, and an ideal side trip if you're heading that way this summer or fall to take advantage of the area's many orchards.

There are still a few occupants in this city, though the vast majority of the town is a crumbling ruins. Dos Cabezas is Spanish for two heads, an odd name easily explained when you look at the mountain directly east of the city, which looks like two men's skulls - or at least that's what the original settlers liked to claim after downing a little too much tequila.

A stage stop was established here sometime in the late 1870s, primarily because it featured the only water west of Apache Spring. Soon gold and silver was discovered on the mountains east of town - deposits still being worked today by hardy men who don't take kindly to strangers.

North of town the city's cemetery is one of the best kept, and oldest in southern Arizona. It speaks volumes about the families that struggled to settle the area, and how young death routinely claimed people in then-harsh Arizona.

Most people visit Dos Cabezas at 55 miles per hour. As a result, while town's colorful history remains mostly lost to today's fast pace, its whitewashed adobe walls and rotting barns have not. It's well worth a visit, particularly during the monsoon season and nearby fall apple harvest.

Less than 20 miles away, Fort Bowie was home to the U.S. Cavalry from 1862 to 1894. Originally it protected the frail stagecoach route and water supply so critical here in the arid Southwest. It played a vital role in the capture of Geronimo after he escaped from the San Carlos Reservation, and though its ruins look anything but spectacular, it was once home to a seven-bedroom, two-story commandant's residence that was described in an army dispatch as, "useless and unnecessary ornamentation....of great expense and waste of time..."

Today the fort's site is a National Historic Site, though years before it was granted this protective designation anything and everything of value was carted off. Today, all that remains are the adobe walls, standing defiant sentinel over the now silent playa. (Remember, Arizona's antiquities law makes it illegal to remove items from such historic sites, including ghost towns. Leave it the way you found it for the next person to enjoy.)

A short walk is required from the parking lot to reach the ruins of Fort Bowie, though it's long enough at slightly more than a mile to give you the opportunity to tread where the U.S. Cavalry once rode, get your boots a little dusty and listen to wind.

This is exactly what ghost towning is all about.