Ghostown Adventure

Yesterday was my husbands birthday. He asked me to take the day off and spend it with him, so we could go explore an Arizona ghost town called Cochran out in the desert of Pinal county. So, we began our little adventure early in the morning and drove as far as we could on paved roads. We did have to drive for quite a while on dirt roads though.

Spring in the desert is beautiful and the landscape was scattered with patches of brightly colored wildflowers. It was gorgeous! My husband found this info on ghosttowns.com...

"Cochran's post office was established January 3, 1905 and discontinued January 15, 1915. Cochran was a mining camp but also served as a stop on the Sante Fe, Prescott, Phoenix railroad. The town supported about 100 people and had a general merchandise store, boardinghouse, and many other establishments. Today all that remains are the coke ovens across the river. The town was named for John. S. Cochran, the first postmaster."

These are the coke ovens. They are really strange looking out in the middle of nowhere!

We tried to get to the kilns, but weren't interested in trespassing across the fence below, or wading the river. Next time we will go prepared. We definitely plan on returning.

We walked along this neat little path for quite a while, wondering if we would ever get to the river, but eventually we found water!

This is us at the Gila river.

On our trip we also found this mine near Winkelman, AZ. It looked like a man made grand canyon, it was SO huge.

This is us inside the shovel of the tractors they use to mine. The tire was three times the height of our car.

Chrysocolla is one of the things they mine there.

It was a really fun trip and nice to take a day off!