Postcard from Glenrio - ghost town

The first and last hotel in Texas

Straddling the Texas/New Mexico border is the ghost town of Glenrio. It's a rather sad little place along Route 66, home only to a few old, deserted ruins, critters and tumbleweeds. Like all ghost towns, it has plenty of stories to tell and it is here where you can not only stand with one foot in one state and the other foot in a different state, but also in two different time zones!

Glenrio was established in 1903 and named Rock Island when the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific railroad laid tracks through the area. Nobody really knows how the name Glenrio was chosen to replace Rock Island several years later as the it is derived from the English word "valley" and the Spanish word for river - the town is in neither a valley nor along a river.

The long abandoned courtyard motel

In 1905, farmers and small ranchers settled in the area on 150 acre plots and a year later, the railroad established a station on the Texas side of the town. Soon afterwards, a post office was opened on the New Mexico side even though the mail was delivered to the rail station on the Texas side. 

By 1920, Glenrio had a hotel (built on the Texas border and billed as the "First and Last Hotel in Texas), a land office, a hardware store, and several grocery stores. Interestingly, the Texas side had several gas stations, but being in Deaf Smith County where no alcohol was permitted, there were no bars. The New Mexico side had no gas stations because gas taxes in that state were so high, but they did have a number of bars because alcohol was not outlawed. This arrangement led to a long debated battle between Texas and New Mexico because both states wanted the tax revenue.

In 1937, Route 66 was built through Glenrio and the town quickly grew as it became a popular stopping place for travelers. A "welcome station" was built near the state line and a post office was established on the Texas side. In 1938, John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath was filmed for three weeks in the town and everyone was sure the town would soon be a city.

The remains of a former filling station

In 1955, Glenrio suffered a severe blow when the train depot closed and then in 1973, the town was doomed when Interstate-40 was built and bypassed the community. First, the gas stations moved to the highway. The welcome station closed and the newspaper went out of business. Shortly, the hotel and grocery stores all closed and by 1985, there were only 2 official residents in town and the only business was the post office on the Texas side.

By 1990, the post office was closed and Glenrio was a town haunted by its former glory. The 2000 census showed 5 people living in the area, but none in the town itself. Today, there are only a few abandoned buildings, mere shadows of their former selves as they slowly crumble in the hot Texas Panhandle wind, the unpaved roadbed of old Route 66, and several shy, skinny dogs who may or may not rouse themselves from the shade of a tree to halfheartedly bark a greeting.

The old Texas-side post office hasn't seen mail
in decades.

That Time In Texas When A Monkey Was Killed Crossing The Road

Town limit sign near the site where

a monkey made a fatal mistake.

The first settlers in Archer County, Texas were ranchers and today, ranching is still the main driver of the area's economy. In 1886, Sam Lazarus purchased the land owned by the Stone Cattle and Pasture Company and established a ranch. He sent to Kansas for Tom Mankins, an experienced ranch foreman, to come down and manage his cattle operation and erected a house for Tom to live in.

In 1890, the Wichita Valley Railway laid tracks across the Lazarus Ranch to connect Wichita Falls with Seymour. They laid a spur line to the ranch headquarters by Tom's house to facilitate cattle shipment. Tom established a supply store at the end of the line as a supply point for the local cowboys and railroad workers to purchase essentials. 

In 1908, Charles Mangold purchased the whole operation and established several business's, including a small hotel, located next to the main rail line. He plotted a town site and began advertising lots for sale. By 1912, enough people had established residence in the community that a post office was applied for. The first name submitted for acceptance by the post office was Mangold, but there was already a town by that name so it was rejected. The next name submitted was Mankins, to honor Tom Mankins. This was accepted and the town of Mankins was officially born with 55 people calling it home. The town continued to grow as a supply point for the surrounding area and eventually included several stores, a thriving bank, two churches, several hotels, restaurants, its own telephone exchange, two schools educating over 400 students and a moving picture theatre.

During this time, a local cowboy, Dick Dudley, gained fame for being a superb horseman, able to ride even the meanest, rankest wild horse. In 1914, a traveling wild west show came through the area and offered cash prizes for cowboys who thought they could ride several of the unbroken wild horses the show had. Dudley rode them all, one after the other, collecting all the cash prizes. While collecting his winnings from the owner of the show, Dudley found out he was having financial difficulties and was trying to find a buyer. Dudley returned his winnings for sole ownership of the show, the contracts of the performers and all of the show's assets. Under his guidance, the show traveled throughout the small tows of West Texas. Although not a roaring success financially, Dick managed to turn a small profit. More importantly, he discovered he very much enjoyed show business.

Dudley expanded the show to include circus-type acts and carnival attractions like rides, games of chance and side-shows such as "Elephant Boy" and "The Snake Girl." During its heyday, the show employed as many as 250 people.  For four months every winter, the show, the animals and most of its employees settled in Mankins for the off-season. For 70 years, well into the 1980's, the town benefited from the influx of winter residents and the additional cash they brought in, but ultimately, it wasn't enough.

Dick Dudley's stone house in Mankins

The consolidation of the ranches and farms and better roads making it possible for residents to live and shop in larger cities began taking a toll on the town. Another limiting factor was the continued lack of potable water. Often, the town required water to be brought in by rail or water tanks. Fewer residents meant fewer students in the Mankins school district and in 1947, it consolidated with the Holliday school district and the school closed its doors. The depopulation continued until the post office closed in 1958. Today, Mankins is a virtual ghost with an official population of just 10 hardy souls, a few empty houses and scattered debris documenting lives of the past.

Abandoned structure in Mankins

For many years, travelers told of seeing elephants, zebras and other exotic animals roaming around among the homes and in cages along the road as they passed through Mankins. One time, a semi-truck driver noticed one of the elephants was standing right beside the highway. Unfortunately, he was staring at the elephant when a monkey who had escaped from his cage decided to run across to the other side of the road. The driver didn't see him in time, the monkey wasn't fast enough and Mankins remains the only place in Texas where a monkey was killed while crossing the road.

Another abandoned building in Mankins.

Postcard From Dobyville Ghost Town

Ghost towns are places where people lived and dreamed and died. They tell the stories of lost lives and abandoned dreams. Often times, the only thing left of an abandoned town is the graveyard. Such is the fate of Dobyville, Texas.

In the state of Texas, there are over 46,000 known cemetery's. No one knows how many others have been lost and forgotten. Time, weather, and vandals destroy the markers. People a generation or two removed from those buried move away and, over time, cannot be bothered to keep up the grounds. Weeds and brush eventually reclaim the land and erase any sign that people were buried there. Sometimes forgotten graves of those gone before us are bulldozed and paved over with highways and subdivisions.

Some of the known cemetery's are well-kept lush parks with mowed green grass, tall shade-trees and water fountains gurgling. Many others though are barren and desolate; quiet places offering stark reminders of our mortality. The Dobyville Cemetery is much closer to the latter than the former. The settlement of Dobyville was established in the 1850's by pioneers who wrestled the land from the Comanche Indians. By the late 1800's, Dobyville had dozens of residents and a post office, a cotton gin and grist and syrup mills. It also had a school, the Lone Star School, with 1 teacher for its 56 students.

WW II soldier killed in action near the

end of the war

Hard times and the hard limestone underlying the ground began to make it too hard to earn a living and the town began to decline in the early 1900's. Better job opportunities became available in larger cities and better roads made it easy to get away. The post office closed in 1900 and the school consolidated with the Lake Victor school district in 1921. In the 1940's there were few residents to take part in the community spring rabbit drive. The annual community event took place on a Saturday in late March or early April and families would gather for a day of hunting and picnicking, but by 1949, only a few scattered houses marked the community on county highway maps. Only a cemetery remained by the 1980s.

Although still active, the Dobyville Cemetery is a typical quiet, country resting place where love ones, recent and from years past, rest in eternal peace. Few people know about this place and drivers on U.S. Highway 281 will speed past it without seeing, without knowing that here lies people who lived their lives, dreamed their dreams, loved and were loved, laughed and cried and at one time, were important to someone.

Baby's grave - always sad to see

Another child's grave. RIP little one

Postcard From Terlingua, Texas

Just south of Alpine on Texas Hwy 118 going to Terlingua is where civilization takes an abrupt vacation.  This seemingly endless highway, devoid of towns, gas stations, motels, stores and most other cars is like a road leading to the end of the world. If you are the kind who likes isolation and simplicity, the 80 miles of desert, ranch land and mountains have the ability to awe you with beauty. A drive through any desert can be very enjoyable if you have a reliable car, but if your car is sickly, this is one of those roads that should only be aspired to rather than attempted.

Man has inhabited the area around Terlingua for at least 10,500 years. The Comanche and Apache Indians controlled the region for many generations. Explorers occasionally came here, but never stayed. The land was too remote, too harsh, and the fierce Indians drove away even the hardiest and most dedicated. In the late nineteenth century, after the Indians had been largely subjugated and removed by the soldiers, a few settlers came to this wild area to try and make a go of it, but the land accepted civilization only reluctantly.

To call the area settled and fully civilized today would be stretching it. It takes a different kind of person to live here year-round. The few ranchers, desert-rats, and other residents are strong-willed, determined, stubborn individualist who protect their way of life and freedom with fierceness not usually seen in "normal" folks. There are few police and the area is large. If people here have a problem, they take care of it themselves. And if one of their own needs help, they're right there to lend a hand. A lot of people would like to live that way, but few actually can.

Once you pass the Longhorn Ranch Motel, you know you are close to the town. There is no town limit sign, no official boundary. Stubbornly remaining unincorporated, you are either in town or you are not. Like most of Texas, being in Terlingua isn't so much a matter of physically being there as it is a state of mind.

Cinnabar in the area was found and used by Native Americans who prized its bright red color for body art and as paint for rock and cave paintings. Mexican miners had discovered the cinnabar deposits by the 1850's, but until the 1890's, the remoteness and hostile Indians prevented wide-scale mining. Since mercury was used in the fuses of bombs and bullets, mining in the area took off in the early 1900's and continued through 1945 until the conclusion of WWII greatly reduced the market. The population plummeted from 3,000 to zero within weeks of the mines closing and Terlingua became a true ghost town with abandoned buildings, mine tailings and discarded cars and wagons rotting away in the desert sun.

Terlingua ruins

Terlingua remained deserted, desolate and lonely until 1967 when Wick Fowler, Frank Tolbert and Carol Shelby organized a chili cook-off to be held in the former town. The whole thing began when H. Allen Smith, a writer from New York, claimed in a magazine article that nobody could make better chili than him. The Texas boys promptly answered, claiming Smith was a "know-nothing maker of vegetable stew" and issued a challenge to pit Wick Fowler's Texas chili against Smith's New York version in what they called "The Great Chili Confrontation." Shelby owned a 220,000 acre ranch outside Terlingua so it was decided to host the competition in the ghost town just to see if they could attract a crowd of people to the middle of nowhere. News of the upcoming contest became widely known when it was written up in numerous national publications, including Sports Illustrated.

More than 1,000 people showed up for that initial contest, all of them sleeping in tents or their cars since there were no lodging facilities. Large quantities of alcohol was imbibed and all sorts of foolishness and nudity was not only tolerated, but encouraged. In the middle of it all, Fowler and Smith managed to cook their chili. 3 judges were tasked with determining a winner. The contest was declared moot when the tie-breaker judge gagged on a spoonful of Smith's chili and fell to the floor in gastric distress. He eventually was able to claim his taste buds had been damaged beyond repair and he had been rendered physically incapable of submitting a vote.

From that debaucherous start, a few hardy individuals began arriving to live in the crumbling buildings. A commune of hippies tried, but failed to create a sustainable desert utopia. Eventually, others came who wanted to settle there because they liked the isolation or needed the remoteness to leave their past behind and get a clean start. Asking a person about their past was considered rude and could even be dangerous.

Terlingua has come a long way since that first chili cook off. Some of the roads are now paved and there are several motels, gas stations, stores and a new post office building.  Business warriors and moneyed elites from Austin and Georgetown have started buying up property and refurbishing structures into weekend retreats. A private airport has been built. The little ghost town far from anywhere even has Wi-Fi. Progress has arrived.

Terlingua Store

Some folks, like myself, would rather civilization and progress not touch this place. I selfishly would like for it to stay the way it is in my memory, the way it was when I first made trips here in the 1970's.  If I could, I'd tie an anvil to the feet of time in Terlingua, causing it to drag forward slowly, ever so slowly. For now, it's still a cool little town, but it ain't what it was. 

Terlingua Cemetery grave

Old abandoned wagon

The Terlingua Cemetery dates from the early 1900's.
Final resting place for miners & residents who
died in mine accidents, gunfights & the
influenza epidemic of 1918. Very few died
of old age.

 

 

Postcard From Medicine Mound, Texas - Ghost Town

In southeastern Hardeman County in West Texas is the interesting little ghost town of Medicine Mound. The town was named after the four nearby cone-shaped dolomite hills which rise 350 feet above the prairie and were called Medicine Mounds by the Comanche Indians. The hills have flat tops which the Indians considered to be the home of powerful, but benevolent spirits and they used these hill tops to hold sacred ceremonies and to mix medicinal herbs so the spirits would make the curative powers even stronger.

Medicine Mound once had a population of 500 with 22 businesses, including a newspaper called "The Citizen." A devastating fire in 1932 destroyed most of the buildings in downtown and with the exodus of people already started for better job opportunities in larger towns, few of the burned-out businesses rebuilt. By 1940, there were only 6 business properties still open to serve the remaining 210 residents. 

The Medicine Mound school was closed in 1955 and the handful of students traveled to Quanah to continue their formal education. With a population less than 100, the post office and all but one store, the Hicks-Cobb General Store, closed down in the late 1950's. In 1980 there were still 50 residents in the vicinity, but these were mostly older people who still lived and worked on the farms and ranches around the area. 

Bluebonnets and cactus in Medicine Mound

Today the population is zero. The dilapidated remains of an old house and the shell of the W.W. Cole building, a combination drug store, bank, and gas station remain somewhat standing. The Hicks-Cobb General Store also remains, but it was turned into a regional history and cultural museum by the now aged daughter (born in 1927) of the former owner and is not in much better shape than the other 2 buildings. The museum was supposed to be open every Saturday from 10:00 - 2:00, but during my visit on a Saturday during those hours, it wasn't open, not a single person was anywhere in sight, and judging by the deep layer of dust which covered everything viewable through the window, it hadn't been opened or attended to in a good long while.

The old W. W. Cole building with the gas pumps still
standing sentinel

Medicine Mound doesn't have much of an interesting history. No bad men robbed the bank, nobody was murdered there, it had no notorious residents and there aren't even any mysterious ghost stories about the small cemetery where a few of its residents remain resting in peace. It was just a quiet little town where normal everyday people lived and dreamed and died. And then, having served its purpose, Medicine Mound died too.

The town "Necessary Room"

The only remaining house in Medicine Mound has
seen better days

I wonder what happened to the people who
lived here. Did they live full, happy lives
until death took them to a new home or did
their dreams die and they simple pack up
and leave without looking back?

At one time this was someone's pride and joy. Iris flowers
were lovingly planted around the property.

Postcard from Baby Head, Texas

Texas Historical marker at Baby Head Cemetery

Sometime between the late 1850's and 1873 (no written historical records have been found giving the exact date), Mary Elizabeth, a 10-year-old white girl, was kidnapped from her parent's cabin in the sparsely settled Texas county of Llano. By riding several miles to other local ranchers, the alarm was raised and a half-dozen men were formed into a search party. Shortly after meeting at the missing girl's home to begin their rescue attempt, an Indian pipe was discovered. The poor unfortunate child must have been taken by a raiding party of the same Comanches who had recently been stealing horses and committing other depredations in the area.

The next afternoon thinking the Indians were long gone, the men were about to give up the mission when they crested a high hill and came upon a most grizzly discovery. In the forks of a large mesquite tree they found the tortured, dismembered body of Mary Elizabeth still wearing the muslin dress her mother had made. Nearby, at the very top of the hill, they found her severed head impaled on a stick that had been stuck in the ground. Wishing to spare the women, especially the mother, from the gruesome manner in which the child had died, the men buried the body nearby in a hastily dug grave marked only by a crude cross made from sticks. Mary Elizabeth's parents soon moved away and time erased all traces of the little girl's grave.

Grave of J. Willbern who
died in 1887 at age 27.

The local people began calling the small mountain Babyhead Mountain in honor of the child who suffered such a terrible death. A creek which flowed nearby was also called Babyhead. As more people settled in the area, a community was established with several stores, a community meeting house and a school. A post office was granted in 1879 under the name of Baby Head and in 1884, the Baby Head cemetery was established when a young boy who had died of an illness on New Year's Day was buried. The community of Baby Head became the site of an election and justice court precinct, but with better and more job opportunities in bigger towns, people began to move away and the post office was closed in 1918. Within a few years, every business moved away or closed and Baby Head became a ghost town.

Today, the quiet little cemetery located on State Highway 16 is the only physical remnant of the community and the grave of a little angel remains unfound and undisturbed.



Margaret Calley - died in 1888 at age 22.
"Husband and children; I must leave you,
leave you all alone; My blessed Savior 
calls me;  Calls me to a heavenly home"



Lelah Bell Frazier, died in 1897 4 days shy
of her 4th birthday. "A precious one from us is
gone;A voice we loved is stilled;A place is
vacant in our home; Which never can be filled"

Postcard From Click, Texas

On the road to Click

There used to be a Click, Texas. It was located on ranch lands where Llano, Gillespie and Blanco counties blur together, way out where there aren't many cattle and a lot fewer people than cattle. There were only two ways in, two dusty ranch roads that met and served as the center of Click. The main road, the one from the big town of Llano, was paved with a mix of crushed shale and sand. The other, the one from everywhere else, was rutted white caliche. Neither was much used.

Back in the day when cotton was king, when you could make a good living from ranching if you could only get the cattle to market, when going somewhere was a major challenge that required planning, little stores popped up everywhere. They were the hub of the community, where folks got their supplies, where news was learned, where people met and talked and interacted with each other. And so it was at the little store in Click. Soon, a church was built and since everybody dropped by sooner or later, a Post Office was opened and Click became an official town.

The other road to Click

Click was a really peaceful place when it was established almost 150 years ago. Nothing famous or historically significant is recorded as happening there. Just a few people living their lives, helping each other when circumstances required, going to church when the circuit preacher came to town and the old cowboys too stove up to ranch anymore dipping snuff and jawing at each other as they played dominoes in the shade of the store's wooden porch. It continued to be a really peaceful place right up to when the old ones died off and the young people moved away for big opportunities in the big cities. Progress they called it.

With fewer and fewer people to serve, the post office closed in the 1940's and eventually there just wasn't enough business to keep the store going. When the owner died, his children wanted nothing to do with it and so the store was no more. The church hung on for a few more years, but the congregation became so small, no preacher man would come to preach to the few remaining faithful. The building fell into disrepair and then the unrelenting heat of the summers and the cold winter winds crumbled it to the ground. Dust to dust.

Today, Click is still a peaceful place. So quiet and peaceful you can hear the birds flying and the roadrunner's feet as he rushes across the crusted sand to catch a grasshopper lunch. What remains are a few old stone foundations, some unidentifiable rusted pieces of metal, an abandoned and broken windmill, one working windmill to bring water to the few cattle that sometimes wander by and the Honey Creek cemetery down the road a ways where many of the former Click-area residents are forever peacefully resting.

Click was doomed when people left for progress in the big city. Now people leave the big city for places like this, places where there has been no progress. Maybe Click could live again. If only there was once more a little store to serve as a hub, a place with a shady porch where you could pass the time talking to another person while sipping a cold drink and playing a friendly game of dominoes.

Route 66 - Canyon Diablo (Part 2)

 

Ruins in the Canyon Diablo area.

With the demise of the town of Canyon Diablo, robberies and murder were not nearly so prevalent, but lawlessness in the area didn't disappear.  The roads and trails were still dangerous and travelers had to be especially vigilant.

In 1888, a lone traveler on horseback came upon a horse-drawn wagon along the route a short distance after crossing Canyon Diablo over the bridge. The wagon's contents were broken open and scattered all around. The horses were gone along with the harness. The tongue of the wagon was propped straight up in the air by the neck yoke and hanging from the top of the wagon tongue was a middle-aged man. He was never identified and it was never known why somebody would go to all the trouble to hang him like that. He was buried in an unmarked grave a few feet off the trail.

Several times, trains at the Canyon Diablo station were robbed. On March 21, 1889, four local cowboys pulled off one of the greatest train holdups the west ever saw. By the time they made their getaway, most sources agree they rode away with $100,000 in currency, $40,000 in gold coins, 2,500 silver dollar coins, and considerable jewelry. They headed south along the canyon rim for several miles before circling their horses around trying to throw off the posse they knew would be coming after them. They then split up with two going south and the other two going west.

A posse did indeed come after them the next day. Unfortunately for the robbers, it was led by William O. "Bucky" O'Neil, an expert tracker and lawman who would later be killed on San Juan Hill in Cuba with Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. It took a while, but Bucky and his posse followed two of the robbers into Utah and then back into Arizona until finally capturing them and bringing them in. The other two bandits were also eventually captured, one as far away as Texas, and brought back to the jail in Prescott. All were sentenced to 25 years in prison. The interesting thing was that only $100 of the stolen loot was found on the robbers. Questioned separately, they each confessed to hiding all the coins and jewelry and most of the currency not far from where they robbed the train. There was so much stolen booty that the weight of it all slowed down their horses and would have prevented their getaway.

Could there be 4 fabulously rich treasures still
buried near here?

According to their stories, the stolen goods were quickly divided into 4 roughly equal piles and each man buried his pile among a grove of trees on the rim of Canyon Diablo not far from the old town. Unfortunately, by the time the prisoners told their stories and lawmen went to retrieve the stolen property, every tree within several miles of the designated spot had been cut down by lumbermen. It was impossible to determine exactly where to dig and after a few weeks of looking, the search was discontinued. Over the years, many treasure hunters have searched for the 4 buried treasures, but to this day, nobody has reported finding anything so all of that money and jewelry must be assumed to be there still.

In 1905, two cowboys, John Shaw and William Evans, entered the WigWam Saloon in Winslow. They each ordered a shot of whiskey and placed payment on the bar, but before they downed the liquor, their attention was drawn to a gambling table which held a stack of almost 500 silver dollars. After a short, whispered conversation, they approached the table and pulled their guns. They filled their pockets with the coins and when they couldn't fit any more into pockets, they pulled off their hats and filled them with the rest before running out of the saloon.

Cowboys holding up the corpse
of Shaw

The county sheriff and his deputy went after them and were soon tipped off that the robbers had jumped on a train headed west. They boarded the next train themselves and upon arriving at the station in Canyon Diablo, learned the men they were chasing had gotten off their train and had been seen still in the area. While walking around the remnants of the town, in a stroke of good fortune, the criminals John Shaw and William Evans came walking around the side of an old warehouse building and came face to face with the lawmen. A gunfight immediately erupted with 21 shots fired. One of the robbers, Evans, was wounded and captured, the sheriff's shirt had two  bullet holes in it, and the second robber, Shaw, was shot in the head and killed. The lawmen had Shaw quickly buried and brought their wounded prisoner back to the Winslow hospital.

Getting ready to give  the body
of John Shaw his last drink

Two evenings later, a bunch of drunk cowboys in the WigWam Saloon heard about the shootout and were discussing it when one of them said, "You know, those two boys bought themselves a drink and didn't get to drink 'em. That ain't right. You think they gave old Shaw a shot of whiskey before they buried him? He's owed one." Before long, in their drunken condition, about 20 men decided they would ride to Canyon Diablo and give John Shaw the drink that was owed him. Carrying plenty of bottles of whiskey with them to keep the party going while they rode a freight train to Canyon Diablo, they arrived at the cemetery just before the sun rose and dug up Shaw's body, rigid in rigor mortis. Holding it upright beside the grave, they put a hat on his head, held a bottle of rotgut whiskey to his cold lips and poured down a good-sized gulp. He was then reburied with the half-empty bottle of whiskey. It happened that a photographer with his equipment had come along just for fun and with the sun now up over the horizon, there was enough light so before the cowboys reburied Shaw, he took 6 photos to commemorate the occasion. After printing, the 6 photos were displayed in the WigWam saloon until the 1940's when the building was torn down.

Sometime around the 1880's, an individual prospector who went by the name of Cannon was seen roaming the area. The Indians knew of him, but never bothered him as they considered him "touched" or crazy in the head. He lived by himself in the caves found along Canyon Diablo. By the early 1900's, he was often seen trudging through the area leading a donkey which carried a few camp supplies and a large, leather saddlebag. He made 3 trips each year into Winslow for supplies and each time he paid for the supplies from a large wad of cash. Cowboys looking for lost cattle in the wide-open plains would sometimes see and follow him trying to find out what he was doing and where he might stash his money. It was determined he was looking for meteorites that came from the giant crater just east of the area. Many of these meteorites contained very small diamonds. To get the diamonds required breaking the stones into small pieces, down even into dust, so it was not commercially profitable, but it could be to a lone prospector with nothing else to do and plenty of time and patience.

Eventually it was discovered that several times each year, he carried a leather bag full of tiny diamonds to a number of small railroad towns many miles away where he would sell just enough of them to get the amount of cash he needed. The rest he would put back into the bag and carry it back with him. On a number of occasions, bandits tried to follow to relieve him of his diamonds and cash, but he always managed to elude them and disappear.

Back in the Canyon Diablo area, on at least two occasions, men found and jumped him only to find he carried no cash and no diamonds while he wandered around the canyon and plains looking for meteorites. He had to have several caches of money and diamonds secreted in the caves where he lived. This went on for over 30 years so people figured his hidden treasure had to be worth a great amount.

The last time he came to Winslow was in 1917 and that was the last time anyone saw him alive. In 1928, the skeleton of a man who would have been about 80 years old was found in a pit just east of Winslow. With 2 bullet holes in the skull, it was obvious the man had not died of natural causes. No money or diamonds were found with the skeleton, but a wallet was found in the rotting trousers containing a picture of the old prospector when he was younger. A scrap of paper with the name Cannon was also in the wallet. Matching clothes he was last seen wearing in Winslow and a knife known to belong to Cannon in the shirt pocket convinced the authorities of his identification. The coroner said he had been dead at least 10 years.

A few weeks after discovery of the skeleton, a man seriously wounded by a shotgun crawled into a line camp of the Pitchfork Ranch west of Winslow. The man had with him a leather pouch filled with diamonds. Before he died, he told the two cowboys who found him that he and his partner had found a cache of Cannon's diamonds in one of the caves he was thought to have lived in. While dividing them up, he and his partner had gotten into an argument and managed to shoot each other. He said his partner was dead and he had only managed to crawl out of the cave with his half of the diamonds.

The cowboys patched him up as good as they could and began the journey to the Winslow hospital. On the way, the man tried to describe the cave's location, but he passed out before pinpointing it. He died without regaining consciousness so he never was able to give an exact location. He also never told them his name and with no identification on him, was buried the next day as a John Doe. The cowboys took the diamonds to a jeweler who pronounced them of very good industrial grade quality and paid cash for them on the spot. The cowboys took the time to tell the local sheriff the story, conveniently leaving out their "recovery" and sale of the diamonds, then took the next train to California and were never seen in Arizona again.

Caches of diamonds could very well still be
out there, somewhere.

The sheriff and his deputies made several searches over the next 3 months trying to find the reported body and the other half of the diamonds, but with just a general idea of the location, they never found either. Word of the lost diamonds got out and numerous people spent a lot of time searching Canyon Diablo above, around, and below the eventual site of Two Guns, but no body and no diamonds were ever found. As far as is known, none of Cannon's other suspected caches of diamonds and money were ever found either.

While we were at Two Guns on our Route 66 adventure in the early summer of 2012, we walked around on the rim of Canyon Diablo and I kept a sharp eye out for the tell-tale glint of silver or a sparkle in the setting sun from a diamond or piece of jewelry. I didn't venture down into the canyon itself and I never saw a sparkle or glint of anything. We drove across the bridge and down the rough road a ways, stopping to take a few pictures, but by then the sun was fast becoming just a memory and I didn't really feel comfortable being out there like that, just the two of us in the dark. I'm sure it was just my over-active imagination, but a small little voice inside my head was reminding me there are plenty of things in the world we don't understand and maybe, perhaps, the tortured, agonized souls of Apache warriors and the restless spirits of murdered men just might fall into that category. It was a very rational and well-thought-out decision to head on back to civilization before the night became so black it would be hard to see the dirt road and dangerous to drive back across that lonely bridge spanning that eerie canyon. It was a very rational decision that had nothing at all to do with being scared of things that come out after dark.

The sun going down behind ruins along the
Canyon Diablo rim.

I felt a lot easier after we were back on I-40 headed west to Flagstaff. It was time to seek shelter for the night; our kind of shelter- with an air conditioner, a flat screen TV, hot and cold running water, a nice bed, Internet access and a hot breakfast in the morning. Whatever was going to happen in Canyon Diablo that night would just have to happen without us. Still, it sure would have been nice to find a stash of valuable coins or an old leather bag of diamonds. Maybe next time.

Go to the first Route 66 entry here.

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Route 66 - Canyon Diablo (Part 1)

Not far down from Two Guns lie the ruins of one of the most vicious, lawless towns the West has ever seen, Canyon Diablo. Not many people are familiar with it today, but none of the more famous rough and tumble cow towns like Abilene or Tombstone even came close to this town of evil.

Newer bridge over Canyon Diablo constructed
in the 1930's.

The railroad came through this area in 1881 and laid lines as far as the rim of Canyon Diablo when it encountered financial problems. While the work crews waited for the railroad to get their financial house in order and for construction of the bridge across the canyon to begin, they camped along the canyon. Before long, a loose sort of settlement had begun. Since it was on the trail taken by freight and passenger wagon trains between Flagstaff, Prescott, and other towns in the area, business began to boom. Before long, saloons and bawdy houses began to spring up which attracted even more of the criminal element and men with little moral guidance. Eventually, there were over 2,000 residents (mostly killers and wanted men) in a 1-mile long, 1 road "town" with no lawmen to keep the peace. The lone road ran down the middle of town and was named Hell Street. Along this street were 14 saloons (with names like The Last Drink, Road to Ruin, and Name Your Pizen), 10 gambling houses, 4 houses of ill repute and 2 dance halls which were really just 2 more whore houses, but with better looking, higher-class ladies who sang songs between taking care of customers.

Two of the houses of prostitution were owned by women, rough and tough former fallen doves themselves, who didn't take nonsense from anyone. Situated directly across Hell Street from one another, Clabberfoot Annie and B.S. Mary (the B.S. did not stand for Betty Sue) would often stand in their respective doorways hollering insults at each other. After a few days, when one or the other could take no more, she would rush across the street only to invariably be met in the middle of the road by the other to begin fighting, throwing punches like men, pulling hair and ripping each other's cloths off much to the delight of the men standing around. One time, both ladies were wearing each other out and finally, when both were completely naked, Clabberfoot Annie, who actually was rather pretty and about 6 inches shorter than the 6 foot tall, big-boned B.S. Mary, ran back into her establishment and came back out with a shotgun. As B.S. turned and began to run away, Annie let her have it, filling Mary's broad, naked behind with bird-shot.

With no sheriff around, robberies, gunfights and murder was an everyday occurrence. A number of times, ownership of a saloon changed hands when the man who wanted it simply killed the current owner and proclaimed the property to then be his. Most wagon trains were robbed before reaching the settlement so goods were often in short supply. It wasn't uncommon for saloon owners to hire their own robbers to rob the first robbers so they could get their supply of whiskey.

Eventually, the wagon trains and law-abiding goods traders organized themselves and funded a good salary for a sheriff to put an end to all the lawlessness. Finding one good enough proved to be more difficult than expected. The first one put on the badge in a ceremony at 3:00 PM and was taken to Boot Hill for burial at 8:00 PM that same night. The second man to wear the badge lasted almost two weeks before he too was carried to Boot Hill. The third carried a double-barrel shot-gun filled with double-0 pellets. Along with killing a number of criminals, he was known to have injured numerous innocent bystanders when he began blasting away toward the general vicinity of the bad guy he was after. He lasted 3 weeks until someone tired of his method of removing bad guys and shot him in the back. The shooting kept on for several minutes with the killer stopping to reload his six-shooter a number of times. By the time he was finished, the sheriff lay completely riddled with 45 slugs in his back. The 4th lasted 6 days before he was felled by a shot to the face.

There were no more sheriffs for a number of weeks after that. Eventually, a skinny ex-preacher man from Texas rode into town. Within 24 hours, he was offered the sheriff position simply because he wore 2 pistols on his hips. The man had no money so he took the position in order to have a roof over his head and food to eat. When asked his name for the paperwork, he hesitated a long time and finally said, "Uh, just call me Bill Duckin."

One of the first things Bill did was order some decent clothes, including 2 long, black, bob-tail coats. From one of them, he cut out the pockets so he could reach in with both hands, grab his long-barreled revolvers and fire them from their swiveling holsters without having to draw them out. The other coat he left the pockets intact so he could wear it to church - just as soon as any church was built in Canyon Diablo. Bill lasted a full 30 days on the job, killing exactly 20 desperado's and wounding  so many that everyone lost count. On the morning of day 30, the day Bill was to collect his first full pay-check, he put on his good coat and was walking to an eating establishment for breakfast when right in front of him a bandit came backing out of The Colorado Saloon with a bag of stolen money in his left hand and a gun brandished in his right. Bill ordered him to halt and drop his gun as he put his hands in the pockets of his coat. Evidently, Bill had forgotten he was wearing his "church" coat with the pockets still intact and by the time he pulled his hands back out and was reaching for his guns, the robber fired, killing him with one shot to the head. Nobody ever figured out why Bill had worn his Sunday-go-to-meeting coat that day, but he was buried in it that afternoon.

The sun setting on ruins around Canyon Diablo
and Two Guns.

The next man to take on the role was "Fightin Joe" Fowler, the same gunfighter who had killed 20 men while bringing law and order to the formerly rough town of Gallup, New Mexico. Just 10 days after putting on the star and having already survived 6 gunfights and 3 bushwhack attempts against him by bandits, Fightin Joe high-tailed it back to New Mexico, leaving  in the middle of the night.

No man was brave enough or dumb enough to take on the role of sheriff in Canyon Diablo after that, but a few weeks later, the railroad received new financing, work on the bridge was completed, and the tracks and men moved on. Seemly overnight, the town of Canyon Diablo became a near ghost with little more than the train station still in business and a sheriff was needed no more.

Go to the first Route 66 entry here.

Or go to the first entry of each state:

Illinois   Missouri   Kansas   Oklahoma   Texas   New Mexico   Arizona   California