AN OLD STONE WALL IN COURTLAND
Heavy frost on everything this morning & I could still see snow on the Chiricahua mountains about 40 northeast of us. I mix up the chicken feed at night now so that is all I have to do in the morning. Just toss it out to the girls without freezing my hands up. Might have to get some of you RV ladies to knit us up 8 toasty little warm chicken sweaters for the gals.
We have been to what's left of most ghost towns here in the Sulphur Springs valley & last Saturday on our way to Pearce's Heritage Days we came across the ruins of the once booming & bustling little mining town of Courtland. As with all other true ghost towns there wasn't much left of anything compared to what was once originally there. What is left of Courtland is stretched out over a mile or so along a dirt road. A few remnants of a stone wall here, some concrete slabs there, & one heavily constructed & reinforced concrete building that once was a jail. As with all ghost towns we have rambled around in it is hard for the mind to imagination what actually took place at these sites. Standing amidst rubble of tumbled walls I try to close my eyes & return to the towns heyday but all my imagination has to go on are old faded photos of ghost towns, some old Hollywood movies, pieces of pottery, crumbling walls, maybe a few weathered boards with rusting nails, & perhaps an old leather sole from an old boot long forgotten. Underbrush overgrows what were once bustling streets filled with people. All traces of former railroads are gone & it's difficult to look back into history across the desert landscape & see old steam engines pulling railroad cars loaded with merchandise, ore from the mines, cattle, & people. Hard to imagine children playing in the streets, horses tied up alongside old wood sided building & folks dressed in their finery buying sugar & flour in the general store. Miners whooped it up in the many saloons at nights. Strangers arrived daily by horseback, stagecoach, or trains. It is an era that is lost forever & it is only the winds in the mountains that whisper the tales of a life & times that none of us will ever know......or imagine:((
This was COURTLAND.
And below is Courtland to-day.
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 INSIDE THE JAIL |  THE COURTLAND JAIL |  |
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We caught ourselves a break to-day when the local propane delivery truck from Wilcox brought a load of propane for Jeanie & Ray's large propane tank here at the ranch. It's a once a year delivery & supplies the house with heat. We had filled up our motorhome's propane tank in Douglas about a month ago & were down to about half a tank. Normally at three quarters empty we would have to square everything away, bring in the slides, disconnect the water, sewer, electricity, & satellite dish lines & drive our house to a propane filling station either in Douglas or at the closer Double Adobe RV park about half way to Bisbee. While the fellow was filling the ranch tank Kelly asked him if he could fill our tank as well......& he did. Nice break & it sure saved us a disruptive hassle.
SIGNS OF MINING NEAR COURTLAND
I have a habit of loosing camera lens caps & as of last Saturday my last lens cap had departed to the fair land far away where missing things somehow go. Needed a lens hood for my smaller lens anyway plus both camera lenses were in need of UV filters. Figured we might as well head on over to Sierra Vista where we had looked up a camera store that had all the aforementioned items. The road to Sierra Vista is an easy wide open spaces drive that gently winds between the Dragoon & Mule mountains. We drove through Tombstone at high noon & if I would have had my window down we might have heard some gunfire coming from the OK Corral gunfight site. They do re-enactments there daily. We have been to Tombstone a couple times before & it is very commercialized but I would recommend you do the BIRDCAGE THEATER if you go there. Check out our TOMBSTONE PHOTOS. This place has not been jazzed up & re-constructed. It an eerie place to wander around in & it smells very, very, old. If there are such things as ghosts I'm sure they are present in this old aging building. Yes, there is a gift store at the back door exit but that doesn't have anything to do with what is inside that old building!!
<<< INSIDE THE BIRDCAGE THEATER 2007
The Charleston Road runs between Tombstone & Sierra Vista & for us to-day it was a trip down memory lane because we spent a few very enjoyable weeks boondocking in the area this past January. It was at this time we did day trips to the ghost towns of Charleston, Millville, & Fairbank. Took us 2 days to find the crumbling adobe walls of Charleston amidst the heavy mesquite underbrush. If anyone is interested you can find our daily adventures in our archives. Look back to late January of this year for our times in this area. Also February & March for our times at the ranch & our escapades into the Dragoon & Chiricahua Mountains.
THIS CAN BE A HARSH LAND
Sierra Vista is a fair sized city & easy to get around in. Every kind of store, facility, or business you need is here stretched out along Fry Boulevard. Big box stores like Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, & Frys. All the regular eating places are here too. The driving force behind Sierra Vista is the large army base, Fort Huachuca. We toured the Fort last March plus, Coronado Peak & Carr Canyon. And of course it's all in our March archives.
DESERT JUNK
Hit a few thrift stores to-day & then the busiest grocery store I've ever seen. Frys is a grocery chain found only in the southwest & is very, very, popular. It was our second trip to Frys this year & it must have been our lucky day because we caught ourselves another break. Kelly had picked up a Fry's discount card last March & that saved us a few dollars but on the first Wednesday of every month it is an additional 10% off for Seniors. We didn't know that but when Kelly went to pay, the cashier eyed me up & down with a wary eye, turned to Kelly & asked, "is he 65!!" Guess my old torn shirt, dusty hat, & totally out of control beard must have scared her real good & she was afraid to ask me directly. I like when that happens. Don't ask me about the days an old girlfriend dressed me in white pleated pants, panama sneakers, pink polo shirts, & hung a gold chain around my neck. Made me wear a matching gold bracelet to my sparkly watch on my other wrist. No, don't even go there!! And no, the gold was not real. It was just window dressing for her new boyfriend. Is it any wonder I prefer to be a scruffy old sod busting cowboy these days:)) Maybe I'll do a blog on that era of my life sometime. Maybe use some pink ink too!!
Anyway, I got kinda sidetracked again but I did find the camera accessories I needed & if your in Sierra Vista & need to do some wheeling & dealing be sure to drop in & see a friendly old guy by the name of Harvey Ross at LANDMARK PHOTO 400 W Fry Boulevard. "Old guy' were Harvey's words not mine:))
We were back at the ranch by 4:15 just in time to get the chickens saddled up & the dog's fed. Another fine day in the life & times of, The Bayfield Bunch:))
GROANER'S CORNER:)) Two cows standing next to each other in a field, Daisy says to Dolly "I was artificially inseminated this morning." "I don't believe you," said Dolly. "It's true -- no bull!", exclaimed Daisy.
BLOGGER WEBSITE http://thebayfieldbunch.com/
OUR PHOTO ALBUMS http://picasaweb.google.com/stargeezerguy/
The only thing better than right now will someday be the memories of right now....AL.
MY SMUG MUG (I am finally working on updating this site)
ONLY CRUMBLING ADOBE WALLS LEFT OF THE TWENTY OR SO BUILDINGS
SOME OF CHARLESTON'S WILD WEST HISTORY
THE CRUMBLING SALOON IN GLEESON WHERE JOHNNY RINGO WAS LAST SEEN AT THE BAR
SOMETIMES ONLY PART OF CRUMBLING STONE FOUNDATIONS ARE ALL THAT'S LEFT LIKE HERE IN MILLVILLE, AZ.
FAIRBANK'S OLD FORGOTTEN CEMETERY
The historic town of Fairbank used to be a very important transportation hub. Three railroad lines passed through Fairbank including the New Mexico & Arizona which connected Fairbank to Benson & the Mexican port of Guamas. In the 1880s, at the peak of the silver boom in & around Tombstone, Fairbank served as a central point of entry & exit for miners, prospectors, materials, & ore. Tombstone was not connected to the railway until 1903 so passengers had to take a stagecoach from Fairbank. Passengers who stepped off the train in Fairbank in the 1880s would have seen an elegant hotel and restaurant, a post office, railroad depots and several other businesses. 
And so it was that we pulled off the highway into a dirt parking lot & down around a short road to what was left of the once booming little town of Fairbank. Well, there isn't much left but a sign tells us that it is probably one of the last authentic places with some original buildings intact. The old schoolhouse has been restored & is now a museum but it was closed to-day. There were 3 wooden buildings of which 2 were locked. The small open building was probably for horses years ago. A handwritten sign on another building said for us to stay back because of rattlesnakes. The largest building is completely enclosed by a wire fence with a no admittance sign. This was the General Store, Saloon, & Jail years ago. Plans are in the works to restore this building & a new steel roof has already been put on to protect what's left of the interiors. The San Pedro River & old railway line run along a short distance west of the buildings. 
It was Fairbank's old cemetery located about a half mile north of the town down a narrow dusty mesquite lined road that interested us the most. The cemetery is located atop a rough & rock strewn hill with a narrow footpath leading up to it. As we walked up the path I imagined how many of Fairbank's residents had been carried up this rocky stretch to their final destination. I also thought of all the people who flock to Tombstone's Boot Hill & believe that to be a real authentic cemetery. Oh sure, there are people buried there all right, but anything you see above ground has been manufactured & jazzed up for the tourist trade. I wonder what people would think if they ever saw a real western cemetery, untouched by human hands for over a century. I'm sure a lot of folks would find it boring with it's piles of stones, brambly mesquite trees, decaying old wooden crosses, & rusting gates & fences. No fancy or humorous inscriptions on the tombstones, because there are no tombstones. Just piles of rocks & stones on the gravesites with a few old tattered & broken wooden crosses that have stood the winds of time. Anything inscribed on a piece of wood has long been weathered out by the Arizona sun. There are no flowers here, no manicured trees, no finely mowed grass. Just piles of rocks marking the end of someone's life. No one to remember, no one to care. 
And so we made our way back down the hill of forgotten dreams & walked the half mile back to our car for some much needed water. Tucson tied a heat record to-day at 91F which was first set back in 1910. We probably topped out somewhere around 85F in our area & by the time we made it back to the car from the cemetery Kelly had a headache from the heat. The sun just seemed to ignite your skin everytime it touched you. I've heard it called a dry heat down here but I think it's more like a fry heat. Thank heavens for A/C in the car. The heat must have been brutal in the old days in these parts. Hard to comprehend people out in the hot sun digging holes in the hardened ground searching for silver, gold, & copper, day after day. I'm sure it led many to early graves. 
From Fairbank's we headed west to Whetstone where Kelly had seen a pottery place advertised on TV. Browsed around in there for awhile & thankfully came away empty handed. Headed back down highway 82 past Fairbanks, through Tombstone & south to Bisbee. Stopped along the highway in Bisbee at a scenic look-out & took a few more photos of this picturesque little town in the mountains. And, it seems everytime we go to Bisbee it seems to expand it's boundaries. To-day we stumbled into a little town once known as Warren, but has been annexed by Bisbee so falls under the Bisbee name now. A couple of weeks ago we came across San Jose which is another little town also now under the name of Bisbee. So, for anyone going to Bisbee, be aware that it is made up of 3 separate little towns. Or is it 4. There is another little section on Erie Street that seems to be a whole street complex unto itself & if you find The Bisbee Breakfast Club........you have found Erie Street. The BBC - 
