Cordes: A Crossroads That Named Itself

Just off the highway, a cluster of old buildings marks a place called Cordes. It is barely a dot on the map now, but in the eighteen eighties it was a vital desert crossroads.

John Henry Cordes established a settlement here in eighteen eighty-three where territorial travel routes met. Stagecoaches, miners, ranchers, and sheepherders all passed through. When Cordes applied for a post office under the name Antelope Junction, the territory rejected it because the name was already taken. So he used his own.

As nearby mines opened, Cordes grew into a supply depot. The post office closed in nineteen forty-four, and the town faded through the nineteen fifties.

What makes it unusual: the Cordes name still marks the spot, more than one hundred forty years after John Cordes first planted a flag here in the dust.