Email
PrintArizona Centennial
During its centennial year, there’s no better place to discover the Copper State’s cowboy and Indian past than Cochise County.
Arizona’s rough-and-tumble 100 years of statehood trace back to its frontier origins as a gold rush-era territory. At the epicenter of Indian wars, border disputes with Mexico, and gunfights between rival cowboy gangs and gold prospectors, Arizona put the “wild” in the Wild West. It remained a renegade into the 20th century, refusing joint statehood with New Mexico and repeatedly being scorned by Congress for appearing too dry, too empty, and “too Hispanic.” But in the end, the diverse and hardscrabble population prevailed, becoming citizens of the last continental state to join the Union on February 14, 1912.
This Valentine’s Day, the 48th state celebrates its 100th anniversary of statehood, an occasion worthy of commemorating with a trip to some of its most famous cowboy and Indian sites, which happen to be clustered on the fringes of the Mexican and New Mexican borders in the remote southeastern corner of the state. It’s here, in Cochise County, where the landscape, history, and towns — Tombstone, Bisbee, Douglas, Benson, Sierra Vista, Willcox — most evoke the Old West. Because, in fact, almost everything that happened in Arizona’s Old West happened in Cochise County.
Before there was even a glimmer of statehood, before there were any cowboys among the cactus here, there were Indians. The land is steeped in Native history as layered, deep, and ancient as the state’s Grand Canyon. And there is perhaps no better place to learn about that early history than the Amerind Foundation, a world-class nonprofit museum and research center dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of Native American cultures. Located an easy drive east of Tucson between Benson and Willcox, in the tiny unincorporated town of Dragoon near the Little Dragoon Mountains, it’s notable not just for the internationally renowned collections of founder William S. Fulton but also for the topography of the place where he chose to put down stakes: a landscape of dramatic granite outcroppings and enormous boulders called Texas Canyon.
Fascinated by the region’s Native American past, the Connecticut-
born amateur archaeologist began visiting regularly in the 1920s, finally buying 1,600 acres and building a home in 1931.
Fulton’s collection of artifacts soon outgrew his FF Ranch residence, and he established the foundation in 1937 to house and study his finds. Even an hour’s visit will attest to the substance of the place, which has been called the nation’s finest private collection of Native American archaeological artifacts and contemporary items. The more than 21,000-piece collection dates from prehistory to the 20th century, and permanent exhibits display Zuni fetishes, kachina dolls, Southwestern tribal pottery, Navajo weavings, and Plains Indians beadwork alongside temporary exhibits of modern-day artists. One of the most compelling and extensive displays documents Geronimo’s capture and surrender to U.S. troops in 1886; among the artifacts is a bow signed by the Chiricahua Apache leader.
From the Amerind and Arizona’s Indian history, continue east on Interstate 10 to cowboy country in the Southern Pacific Railroad’s historic whistle-stop town of Willcox, the birthplace of “the Arizona Cowboy,” singer Rex Allen. A star of western movies and the widely known voice of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color nature films and 150 Disney cartoon characters, Allen created the Rex Allen Arizona Cowboy Museum & Willcox Cowboy Hall of Fame here in his hometown in the Dragoon Mountains. Next door is The Friends of Marty Robbins Museum, which was created by a fan and family friend, who moved her own private collection of memorabilia and artifacts from Robbins’ birthplace in Glendale, Arizona, to Willcox at the invitation of Rex Allen Jr.
Together the two museums create plenty of reasons for lovers of cowboy music to stop in Willcox for a while. Lovers of coffee will want to linger over a cup of joe at Bucko’s Coffee; lovers of wine will want to explore downtown Willcox’s three tasting rooms, featuring local high desert vintages: Gallifant Cellars, Keeling-Schaefer Vineyards, and Carlson Creek Vineyard. If more wine touring is in order, you can head east on Interstate 10 along the Willcox Wine Trail and stop on the outskirts of town at A Taste of Coronado, where you can sit outdoors in the Coronado Vineyards and enjoy a lovely dinner of grilled quail paired with a glass of syrah.
