SimplyLife

On a monotonous three-hour drive up the I-10 this week, most of the scenery is desert, and I mean desert. Not much is going on between Tucson and Phoenix in the way of visual entertainment except for the amazing fields of cotton. Most people think that cotton comes out of the South, which is true, but there's also a lot of cotton in Arizona. It's not your run-of-the-mill cotton, but top of the line, long fiber cotton. Arizona cotton is right up there with the coveted Egyptian cotton. It all started with the Goodyear Tire Company purchasing 16,000 acres of desert to grow Pima cotton for vehicle tire threads. This was in 1917 when the automobile was starting to get a real foothold on American transportation. A boll weevil infestation that was decimating Egyptian cotton fields made Goodyear executives search for a similar climate to grow the essential fiber. Now Goodyear, Arizona is a growing city which blends in with city limits of Phoenix. But the fields of white dot the lands...

Cochise County is home to quite a few ghost towns who saw their boom time back in the late 1800s when Tombstone silver was plentiful. The transportation hub in the area was a small town called Fairbank, which is northeast of Casa Wallace. The railroads criss-crossed from Benson to Fairbank, to Bisbee and Nogales.  The New Mexico & Arizona Railroad was the first to lay tracks in 1881. Two other railroads quickly followed suit.  The trains were critical to serving the smelters and mines, as well as hauling people and consumer goods. Fairbank was considered a family town as compared to rough towns of Millville, Contention City, and Charleston. The Grand Central Mill was constructed about 2 miles outside of town and was a silver processing stamp mill.  It was a 24/7 operation with huge pistons crushing ore. It was then processed with mercury in amalgamating pans to bind the silver. Employees, as you might guess did not enjoy a long lifespan working in such toxic condition...