Gun Fights, Tumbleweeds and Moonshine

Desperados freely raining terror on innocent citizens, heroes riding off into the sunset and always victorious good guys are pure Hollywood fiction.

Day-to-day life in the Arizona territory was far short of glamorous. It was back-breaking labor. Whether you worked a filthy hole hoping to strike pay dirt, ran cattle, worked as a bank teller, stagecoach driver or any other job, the hours were long and pay was small.

There was little time for play. Scratching out a meager living was full-time work in the territory--a living that often hinged on whether that vein played out, the going price of beef or when that railroad would finally arrive.

While Tombstone's legend continued to grow, scarcely 15 miles east of the popular tourist destination another once-thriving city was slowly deserted. As fate would have it, this bustling community wasn't lucky enough to host the showdown at OK Corral, and as a result can now be counted among the West's last victims.

Day in and day out, Gleeson's bleached adobe walls surrender a little more to Arizona's relentless sun, despite turquoise deposits rich enough to attract native American's long before white man ever settled in the area. Its first post office opened in 1890 under the city name of Turquoise, thanks to the area's rich history of mining the green ore.

When gold was discovered in nearby Pearce in the mid-1890s, and area miners answered its promise of riches, Turquoise's population slowly dwindled until finally the post office closed its doors. It wasn't until John Gleeson, an Irishman, filed a number of claims in the area in 1900 people began coming back. More and more claims were soon filed, and finally the post office reopened under the name "Gleeson."

As demand for copper rose during World War I the city continued to grow--a hospital opened, a saloon served up nightly doses of pain killer and a jail was built for miners to sleep off that periodic over medication.

It was, in essence, one of southern Arizona's thriving rural communities.

The post-war era was hard on Gleeson though, and in 1939 the post office closed permanently. The jail still stands, as do many of the other structures, including the saloon. The hospital is hard to miss, though it's little more than crumbling adobe walls today.

Gleeson wasn't the area's biggest city though. Only a few miles east of Gleeson nearly 2,000 hearty souls once called Courtland home. Though Courtland had a newspaper, butcher shop, post office, bank, and much more, its post office was closed in 1942, shortly after Gleeson's. Much of the city was carted off for its valuable lumber, though the jail and a few other buildings still stand today.

It's impossible to point to any single cause for the area's demise. It may have been copper. It may have been the price of beef. It may have been just plain bad luck. Though no one really seems to know for sure, more than likely it's all of the above.

All we know is slowly, and surely, nearly everyone left, even the moonshiners rumored to have worked a sizable Prohibition-Era still in Gleeson--one that hid its inventory under a special submerged vault.

Though the pond's still there--and as rumor has it, so are the "squeezins"--even the illegal industry dried up.

To get to Gleeson and Courtland, drive to Tombstone on Route 80. Watch for the well-marked turnoff toward Gleeson on the south end of town. Gleeson Road will take you to Gleeson, where you will continue east until you see Ghost Town Trail. Take it north through Courtland and finally into Pearce.