Pearce Ghost Town
Near Tombstone, Arizona
In eighteen ninety-four a Cornish miner and cattleman named James Pearce was working his ranch in the Sulphur Springs Valley when he stumbled on a gold outcrop in the Dragoon Mountains. He staked what became the Commonwealth Mine, and a town of fifteen hundred people materialized almost overnight around it. Tombstone, nearby, was already fading.
The Commonwealth Mine produced gold steadily from eighteen ninety-five until nineteen forty-two, when wartime priorities shut it down. The town of Pearce followed the mine into decline. Today it is a partially inhabited ghost town, with the old general store still standing along the highway and a handful of residents among the adobe ruins. The Dragoon Mountains rise just to the west, the same range where Cochise fought the U.S. Army for about eleven years.
