Built on Sand and Sanguine Expectations: Reconstructing the Layout of a Ghost Town, Signal, Arizona Territory

Author(s): Bruce O. Schneider

Year: 2015

Summary

In 1877 and 1878, Signal, Arizona boomed as the site of stamp mills along the Big Sandy River, processing silver ore from the nearby McCrackin Lode. While many proclaimed the McCrackin Lode would be Arizona’s Comstock, the boom quickly turned to bust. Signal was a remnant of its previous self during the 1880s, with its mills operating sporadically, and had truly become a ghost town by the 1890s. A challenge to understanding a settlement like Signal, and many ghost towns like it, is the complete lack of maps or photographs showing the layout of the town. This paper presents a case study in using documentary sources, primarily tax assessment records, along with historic aerial photographs, preliminary archaeological surveys, and GIS to reconstruct the morphology of the Signal settlement through time.

Cite this Record

Built on Sand and Sanguine Expectations: Reconstructing the Layout of a Ghost Town, Signal, Arizona Territory. Bruce O. Schneider. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Seattle, Washington. 2015 ( tDAR id: 434049)

Keywords

Temporal Keywords
1870-1890

Spatial Coverage

min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 443