Abandoned Towns
A weathered wooden building at Cordes with a tin roof, Chevron Gasoline and Coca-Cola signs, and a narrow-bridge sign in front

Railroad and road town · Farm and ranch town

Cordes

An adobe stage stop on the old road between Prescott and Phoenix that became a store, post office and sheep station. The highway left it behind in the 1950s, but the Cordes family never did.

34°18′12″N 112°10′01″W · 3,763 ft

Photo: Mimi Cummins from Canada, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Private property

Cordes is private land, and descendants of John Henry Cordes still live there. An October 2025 guide says the site isn't open to the public and is posted against trespassing. In 2014 a hand-painted sign by the road offered antiques and snacks on weekends; we couldn't confirm that anything still opens. Bloody Basin Road and Antelope Creek Road meet beside the buildings, so you can see them from the road. Stay on it.

Overview

A stage stop that stayed in the family

The barn, with a Cordes Ranch sign at right, 2015
The barn, with a Cordes Ranch sign at right, 2015 · Photo: Mimi Cummins from Canada, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Cordes sits where Antelope Creek crosses the old stage road between Prescott and Phoenix, about three miles west of I-17 and eight miles southeast of Mayer. It began in 1875 as Antelope Station, an adobe stop on the California and Arizona Stage Company's line. John Henry Cordes, a German immigrant who had worked in the Tip Top mill at Gillett, bought it in January 1883 for $769.43 and moved in with his wife, Lizzie, and their year-old son.

When he asked for a post office named Antelope, the Post Office Department turned him down because the name was too close to another in Arizona, so he used his own. The office opened in 1886 by most accounts, in a cupboard in the adobe wall. Cordes was never a mining town. It was a stage stop, store, saloon and post office that kept finding new customers. First came prospectors, then the mines that took their freight through it, then the sheep drives that passed twice a year. It never had more than about 50 people, and the family owned every business.

Cars kept it going after the stages stopped. A gas station opened in 1915. The post office closed in November 1944, and in the 1950s the new highway passed two miles east. The family followed the traffic and built a gas station and restaurant at the new Cordes Junction. The old place never emptied. The family home, which encloses part of the original adobe station, the 1912 barn and the old gas station still stand, and the founder's descendants still live there.

Timeline

From Antelope Station to Cordes

  1. A man named Powell builds an adobe stage station on Antelope Creek for the California and Arizona Stage Company. It's called Antelope Station.
  2. M. J. McAlister sells the station to the Bolin brothers for $1,500.
  3. Station keeper Otto Bolin is stabbed by a drunken traveler after a quarrel over whiskey and dies the next morning. The traveler gets four years in the Yuma prison for manslaughter.
  4. John Henry Cordes, a German immigrant who had worked at the Tip Top mill in Gillett, buys the station from Augustus Bolin for $769.43. His family moves in six days later.
  5. The Cordes post office opens in a cupboard built into the adobe wall. The name Antelope had been turned down as too close to another Arizona office. One account dates that refusal to 1883.
  6. The railroad between Prescott and Phoenix opens, and stage traffic on the Black Canyon road drops off. Cordes turns to supplying ranches, mines and sheep drives.
  7. Fourteen pupils fill the one-room school. About 25 people live here at the turn of the century.
  8. The Bradshaw Mountain Railway opens a siding named Cordes a few miles west, near Cedar Canyon.
  9. The population reaches about 50, all living around businesses the family owns.
  10. Son Charles Cordes takes over and builds a new store with a saloon. Sources date the handover to 1908 or 1910 and the store to 1910 or 1914.
  11. The barn that still stands is built.
  12. A gas station opens for the cars now using the Black Canyon road, one of the first in the area.
  13. Grandson Henry Cordes takes over. The store burns in 1940; miners help carry out the stock, and he rebuilds.
  14. The post office closes.
  15. The new highway passes two miles east. Henry Cordes builds a gas station and restaurant at the new Cordes Junction.
  16. The old gas station at Cordes closes. Sources give both years.
  17. A hand-painted sign by the road offers antiques, drinks and snacks on weekends.
  18. A travel guide reports that descendants of the founder still live at the site and that it isn't open to the public.

1880s–1930s

A station for the sheep drives

Cordes sat on the sheep trail between the summer range around Flagstaff and Williams and the winter range in the desert from New River to Cave Creek and Beardsley. The flocks went south from September to November and came back north starting in February, and for as long as sixty days twice a year the herders camped near Cordes. During a drive 75 to 100 men might be looking for a meal and a bed. Some slept in tents, some in the barn and some in wagons, and the family fed them in shifts in the dining room of the house.

John Henry Cordes built pens, a shearing corral and dipping troughs. Shearing and dipping ran through March and April. A man with hand clippers could shear 20 to 25 sheep a day; gasoline-powered shears, brought in about 1905, raised that to 60. Every sheep then swam the 40-foot trough of lime and sulfur dip before going onto the forest reserve, and men with hooks pushed their heads under. The wool went out in 200-pound sacks to the railroad siding.

On the Fourth of July the family drove to the siding for a 100-pound block of ice. By the time they got it home it weighed about 75.

Trucks replaced the railroad for livestock in the late 1910s, and the rails were pulled from Cordes siding in December 1939. When railroad historian John Sayre described the siding, only a small corral, concrete foundations and the grade were left.

What's left

House, barn, store and pumps

The roadside building with its Chevron and Coca-Cola signs, 2014
The roadside building with its Chevron and Coca-Cola signs, 2014 · Photo: Mimi Cummins from Canada, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
Old cars, trucks and machinery, 2015
Old cars, trucks and machinery, 2015 · Photo: Mimi Cummins from Canada, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

Several accounts agree on what stands at the old townsite: the family home, the barn built in 1912 and the old gas station, its pumps still in place. Part of the original adobe stage station survives inside the walls of the house. In 2014 a weathered wooden building by the road carried Chevron and Coca-Cola signs and a hand-painted welcome board, and old cars sat in the yard. All of it is private, and people live here.

The historic maps below trace the town's place on the road. The 1887 sheet shows Antelope Creek and the wagon road beside it but no name. By 1903 Cordes is marked where roads from four directions meet. On the 1947 sheet the main north-south road still runs through town, with Cordes Peak to the east. The 1974 sheet shows a corral, a landing strip and a water tank, and the 1981 sheet adds the I-17 interchange at Cordes Junction and the street grid of Cordes Lakes to the east.

  • Family home with adobe station inside
  • Barn (1912)
  • Gas station and pumps
  • Wooden roadside building with old signs
  • Old cars
  • Railroad siding grade, a few miles west
USGS topographic map of Cordes at a road junction on Antelope Creek
USGS The National Map, topo. Cordes sits at the junction where the roads cross Antelope Creek.
Aerial view of a dirt road junction with a few buildings and a line of trees along a creek
Aerial imagery, same area. The buildings cluster at the junction. The line of trees to the southeast marks Antelope Creek.

Historic maps

Cordes on USGS maps, 1887–1981

Crops from the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection, centered on the townsite. Each sheet shows what surveyors mapped that year; compare them with today's topo and aerial on this page.

USGS topographic map around Cordes, 1887
Prescott sheet, 1887, 1:250,000 · U.S. Geological Survey, public domain · catalog record

Map & directions

Getting there

Cordes is about three miles west of I-17. From Phoenix, leave the freeway at exit 259 and follow Bloody Basin Road west. From Prescott, the route follows AZ 69 and comes in from the north on Antelope Creek Road. Both end on dirt roads at the townsite.

USGS topographic map from Prescott southeast to Cordes, with both routes drawn on it

Base map: USGS The National Map (public domain). Routes: OSRM on © OpenStreetMap contributors data (ODbL), computed October 2026. Times assume dry roads.

From downtown Prescott36.9 miabout 1 h 03 min
  1. From downtown Prescott, take Cortez Street to Gurley Street and head east. Gurley Street becomes AZ 69.1.3 mi
  2. Follow AZ 69 southeast through Prescott Valley.30.8 mi
  3. Turn right onto South Spring Lane, then right onto East Duffers Drive.2.0 mi
  4. At the end of the road, turn left onto Antelope Creek Road, a dirt road, and follow it south to Cordes.2.8 mi
Google Maps directionsApple MapsOpenStreetMap

Road and safety notes

  • OpenStreetMap tags Bloody Basin Road west of I-17 and Antelope Creek Road as dirt, and notes that Antelope Creek Road north of Cordes is surfaced with mine tailings. An undated listing rates the drive 2WD.
  • Cordes, Cordes Junction and Cordes Lakes are different places. Cordes Junction is the I-17 interchange at exit 262, where travelers fill up before heading into the back country; Cordes Lakes is a subdivision near it. The old town is a few miles west.
  • South of Cordes the road continues toward Cleator, Bumble Bee and Crown King.
  • The buildings and yards are private and lived in. Don't stop in the driveways or walk onto the property.

Photos

Cordes in photos

Visitor reports

Been to Cordes?

Been there lately? Tell the next visitor what you found: whether you could get in, the state of the road and what's still standing. Photos are welcome. We read every report before it appears here.

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Nearby

Other sites near Cordes

Straight-line distance from the townsite to other mapped sites in our Arizona index.

Sources

Sources and credits

  1. ghosttowns.com, "Cordes": fact sheet fields (roads, legal description, climate, best time, remains, the I-17 exit).
  2. Wikipedia, "Cordes, Arizona", retrieved October 2026: the 1883 founding, the refused Antelope name, the 1944 post office closing, coordinates and elevation (GNIS).
  3. American Pioneer & Cemetery Research Project, "Cordes, AZ" (Neal Du Shane, 2007–2012), which reprints Philip Varney's entry from Arizona Ghost Towns and Mining Camps, John W. Sayre's chapter on Cordes siding from Ghost Railroads of Central Arizona, and Robert B. Bechtel and Mynne Cordes Jarman's "Cordes and Cordes Junction": the stage station, the Bolin killing, the 1883 purchase, the post office, sheep drives, the siding, the store, barn and gas station, population figures and the bypass.
  4. Destination4x4, "Cordes Arizona" (October 31, 2025): current private status, family residents, no-trespassing signs, the remaining buildings, Cordes Junction and Cordes Lakes.
  5. Dustin Dudley, "Bumble Bee, Cleator, Cordes" (archived personal site, undated): the family still living at the site, the gas station, barn and old cars.
  6. FunTreks, "Bloody Basin Road" (trail updates 2020–2021): fuel at Cordes Junction, exit 262.
  7. Photos by Mimi Cummins on Wikimedia Commons (2014–2015): the weekend sign by the road in 2014.
  8. Road surfaces: OpenStreetMap, October 2026. Routes: OSRM on OpenStreetMap data, October 2026. Status checked against the sources above on October 19, 2026.

Photo and map credits