Willcox

The Depot and Railroad Avenue

The Southern Pacific depot of 1880 still stands in Willcox, and its marker calls it the only remaining original redwood frame Southern Pacific station in Arizona.² The town lies in the Sulphur Springs Valley of southeastern Arizona, in Cochise County.^1,3 A marker on Railroad Avenue says the street became the commercial center for the growth of Willcox and the valley from the time the Southern Pacific was built through the area in 1880.⁴

The army came before the town: Fort Bowie was established in 1862 about 25 miles southeast of present-day Willcox, and Fort Grant 35 miles to the north in 1872.¹ A temporary camp was set up on the present town site by 1878.¹ By 1880 the railroad had reached Willcox, and a report of October 28, 1880, told of a building boom under way, with tents being replaced.¹ The 1940 state guide gives the town’s namesake as General Orlando B. Willcox (1823-1907), who fought at Bull Run in 1861 and was made commander of the Department of Arizona for 1878-82.⁵

Norton’s Store on the Tracks

John H. Norton, born near Boston in 1847, owned a general merchandise store in Colorado by 1869 and ran the commissary at Fort Grant in 1876.¹ In 1880 he joined with Stewart to set up the John H. Norton firm, the beginning of the Willcox Commercial Company.¹ Besides the Willcox house, the nomination says he owned mercantile establishments in Pearce, Cochise, and Johnson.¹ The store building, put up about 1880, gained a north section before 1900 and a south section about 1920.¹ A post-World War I recession forced the sale of the business in 1923 to Guy and Hazel Holt, who renamed it the Willcox Commercial Company.¹ Holt’s sister and brother-in-law, Edith and Lynn Camp, bought it in 1937 and ran it until 1974.¹

Stock Pens and Cow Camps

In 1940 the Writers’ Program guide found a cow town of 363 people, with stockyards on its southern edge shipping 40,000 or 50,000 cattle a year.⁵ Ernest Schilling homesteaded a ranch around 1906, showed a bull at an exposition in Chicago in 1933, and, unwilling to sell him, brought him back to Willcox on the train and drove him home to the ranch.⁶ Ernest Browning bought the place from Elvie Lane in 1948 for $45,000, and its cattle were gathered for shipment to the Willcox cattle auction.⁶

The Constable and the Train

According to the 1940 guide, Burt Alvord, constable of Willcox, and William Downing, a cattleman, planned the September 9, 1899, theft of more than $10,000 from a Southern Pacific train.⁵ W. N. Stiles, deputy constable of Pearce, helped carry it out, confessed, and then before the trial shot and wounded the jailer at Tombstone and freed Alvord.⁵ Later jailed together again at Tombstone, the two dug their way out, and Alvord was afterward seen in Panama.⁵ The Headquarters Saloon stood in town from the 1890s until it burned in 1940, and Warren Earp was shot and killed there on July 6, 1900.⁷

Adobe, Brick, and a WPA Clubhouse

The Schwertner House of 1880 was built by Delso Smith as a reception center for army officers during the Indian wars.⁸ Mr. Schwertner bought it in 1893, and it went to the local historical society in 1980.⁸ The marker on the Palace Saloon and Pool Hall of 1905 calls it the earliest panel brick commercial building in Willcox, and it served as a meat market during Prohibition.⁹ Thomas A. Huffman established his Toggery in 1916 and put up its building in 1925.¹⁰ The Women’s Club began raising money in the 1920s for a clubhouse and had to give the city three lots and $3,500 before the WPA would build it.¹¹ P. Howard Pregenzer and his crew built it between 1934 and 1936, and the state survey form calls it the only example of the Pueblo Revival style in town.^11,12 The Willcox Commercial Hotel of 1916 once housed traveling salesmen who rode the Southern Pacific, and in 1987 the Brown family restored it as an ice cream parlor and office suites.³