Ghost Town Trail - Gleeson

You too can visit these once thriving mining towns.  Just look up the Ghost Town Trail.  That is actually the name of the gravel road we traveled.  After leaving Courtland, mostly not visible because the gate was locked, we headed up the road to our next stop, Gleeson.

Originally named Turquoise because of the rocks the Native Americans dug up here and made into their fabulous jewelry, the original post office was established in 1890.  Today, as you can see, there are only SOME that live here.

In 1894, John Gleeson came along and registered a claim, calling it the Copper Belle Mine.  Did he pay for the land?  Who knows.  In 1900 he moved the little town just down the hill and called it Gleeson, building another post office.

With around 500 people living there, a jail was of course necessary.  Here's the original, built in 1910.    The jail was used for storage of mostly drunks and petty thieves waiting to be transported to the Tombstone Courthouse, along with bootleg liquor during their prohibition period.

Today, they say there's a snake oil salesman here.  The owner has actually renovated most of the interior and it is now called a museum.  We didn't knock on the door with the virus and all. 

BEFORE the jail, they chained miscreants to a big tree on this site while awaiting their transfer.  Little kids of the town threw rocks at them.  The only cleaning THAT jail got was when it rained.  

Here's what main street looked like back in the day.  That's the Joe Bono store and saloon on the right.  Originally built as an outlet for the Charles Renaud stores (kind of like Montgomery Ward stores), it spent most of it's life as a saloon.

Unfortunately, there was a fire, and not much remains today except the front section.

Inside the Joe Bono saloon.  This is all gone now .... I snatched this image from the internet.

Sadly, in 1912 a fire burned 28 buildings to the ground.  Much of it was rebuilt, because during World War I, copper mines were booming, supplying the demand of the war.

The largest remnants of a building are those of the old NEW school.  Built in 1918, it was a massive two story structure.  The entire bottom floor was used for storage, with the top floor full of classrooms for kids and community meetings.

The last classes were held in 1945 when it closed.  Most of the remaining wooden parts of the building were torn out and used elsewhere.  The floors were taken up and hauled to Tombstone to renovate the floors of Tombstone's Crystal Palace.

There are ruins of a hospital, built by the Shannon Mining Company in 1906, but we did not see them.  John Gleeson sold the Copper Belle Mine to Shannon and by 1913 they were making money hand over fist.  So much so that they built a hospital for their employees, the only one in the entire area between Bisbee and Benson.

Interestingly enough, a Spanish Flu pandemic broke out in 1918, filling the hospital to capacity.  By 1930, most people had left the area, but mining continued until 1958.

There you have it .... the big little town of Gleeson.  A few miles up the road, the gravel turns to pavement as you turn towards Tombstone.

But WAIT!!  There's another ghost town on the map.  That one is coming up!!