The story
Fairbank existed because Tombstone's silver needed a railroad: from 1881 it was the shipping point on the San Pedro where stage lines met the rails. In 1900 its depot hosted a famous shootout when lawman-turned-train-guard Jeff Milton, badly wounded, broke up a robbery by the Burt Alvord gang, killing 'Three-Fingered Jack' Dunlap.
The town dwindled with the mines and hung on as a store-and-schoolhouse hamlet until the last family left around 1970. The BLM now preserves it inside the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, with the 1920 schoolhouse restored as a visitor center.
What remains today
The mercantile, restored schoolhouse (weekend visitor center), houses, and the railbed trail to the town cemetery on the hill.
From the archives
Fairbank Hotel, Fairbank (historical), Cochise County, AZ
Fairbank Commercial Company Building, Fairbank (historical), Cochise County, AZ
Santa Ana de Quiburi Mission (Ruins), Fairbank (historical), Cochise County, AZ
Fairbank turns up on 60,488 digitized newspaper pages from Arizona — read them free in the Library of Congress's Chronicling America collection.
Source: Library of Congress digital collections.
Questions from the field
- Is Fairbank worth adding to a Tombstone trip?
- Yes — it's ten minutes away, free, and quieter history than Allen Street: a genuine railroad ghost town with a shaded picnic stop on the San Pedro.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Fairbank — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Fairbank's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 4533
- — BLM — San Pedro Riparian NCA, Fairbank townsite
- — Contemporary accounts, 1900 Fairbank train robbery