Abandoned Towns
Roofless whitewashed adobe walls beside AZ 186 in Dos Cabezas, with a house and mountains behind

Gold mining town · Copper mining town

Dos Cabezas

A stage stop that became a gold camp and then a copper boomtown. Adobe ruins still line AZ 186, 15 miles from Willcox.

32°10′31″N 109°36′48″W · 5,082 ft

Photo: Marine 69-71, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Ruins · 2022 report

You can see Dos Cabezas from AZ 186, which runs through it. The newest account we found, from May 2022, describes a dozen or so buildings, most of them decaying and three fit to live in, and residents you could count on one hand. The pioneer cemetery is private and still kept up by volunteers, who held a clean-up day in May 2026. Treat the ruins and lots as private property and look from the highway.

Overview

A town under the two heads

The twin peaks at dawn, seen from Willcox, 2016
The twin peaks at dawn, seen from Willcox, 2016 · Photo: E Burk, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

Dos Cabezas sits at the southwest foot of the Dos Cabezas Mountains, about 15 miles southeast of Willcox on AZ 186. The name is Spanish for "two heads." It comes from the top of the range, two rounded granite knobs side by side that you can pick out from across the valley.

The place started as a spring. A US–Mexico boundary survey party camped at Ewell Springs in 1851, and by 1857 it was a stop on the San Antonio and San Diego stage line. Miners worked gold from placers and quartz veins near the station from the 1860s. The town itself dates from 1878 or 1879, depending on the source, and the post office opened in April 1879. After the Southern Pacific reached Willcox in August 1880, Dos Cabezas grew to three stamp mills, a hotel, a brewery, a school, a Wells Fargo office and a newspaper, The Gold Note.

Copper brought a second boom. Promoter Thomas N. McCauley formed the Mascot Copper Company in 1907 and raised money on claims of great ore bodies that mining historian William Ascarza describes as false. A railroad from Willcox reached the Mascot camp in 1915. By 1926 the mine employed 400 people and the town held about 1,000. The rich ore never turned up. Mining fell off by 1928, the railroad was pulled up, and the post office held on until January 1960. Adobe ruins still stand along the highway, and a volunteer association keeps up the pioneer cemetery.

Timeline

From spring to stage stop to copper camp

  1. A US–Mexico boundary survey party camps at Ewell Springs, the spring the town later grew around.
  2. Ewell Springs is a stop on the San Antonio and San Diego stage line.
  3. Miners start working placer gold and gold-quartz veins near the station.
  4. The Murphy Mine, later the Gold Prince, and the Le Roy Mine are located. Sources date the town's founding to 1878 or 1879.
  5. The Dos Cabezas post office opens.
  6. The census counts 126 people. In August the Southern Pacific reaches Willcox and gives the district a railhead.
  7. The town has three stamp mills, a hotel, a brewery, a school, a Wells Fargo office and its own newspaper, The Gold Note.
  8. Promoter Thomas N. McCauley organizes the Mascot Copper Company.
  9. The Dives Mine produces more than $20,000 in gold.
  10. The Mascot townsite is laid out in Mascot Canyon, below the peaks.
  11. The Mascot and Western Railroad opens between Willcox and the Mascot townsite.
  12. McCauley reorganizes as the Central Copper Company.
  13. The mine employs 400 people, and Dos Cabezas reaches about 1,000. A 10,600-foot aerial tram brings ore from the Elma Mine.
  14. Profitable ore runs out. People leave, and the railroad is shut down and pulled up.
  15. The Dives Mine ships about $35,000 in gold. Work there stops three years later.
  16. The post office closes.
  17. Phelps Dodge mines quartz from the Gold Prince as flux for its smelters.
  18. The Dos Cabezas Pioneer Cemetery Association holds its annual meeting and clean-up day.

1907–1928

McCauley's Mascot

The 1922 USGS Willcox sheet, with the rail line into town and the Mascot Mine in the hills above
The 1922 USGS Willcox sheet, with the rail line into town and the Mascot Mine in the hills above · Map: U.S. Geological Survey, USGS catalog, Public domain

Copper claims in the early 1900s set off a new rush in the district. A short-lived camp called Laub grew at the mouth of Mascot Canyon, two miles north of Dos Cabezas, and died for lack of money and low copper prices. Thomas N. McCauley's Mascot Copper Company, formed in 1907, was better at raising money. Ascarza writes that McCauley drew investors with false claims that great ore bodies had been found.

Getting ore to the railhead was the hard part. In 1913 a Pierce-Arrow truck hauled 763 tons from Dos Cabezas to Willcox at 17½ cents a ton-mile, a cost that proved too high. In 1915 the Mascot and Western Railroad laid standard-gauge track between Willcox and the Mascot townsite. When the ore still came up short, McCauley formed the Central Copper Company in February 1919 and raised several million dollars by mailing appeals to investors across the country.

In 1926 the company added a power plant, a crusher, a concentrator and a 10,600-foot aerial tram from the Elma Mine on the north side of the range.

It didn't last. By 1928 the profitable ore was gone, people drifted away, and the railroad was shut down and taken up. Over the years the Mascot and Central Copper companies produced about 3.5 million pounds of copper and silver, valued at the time at about $750,000. Smaller gold mines nearby, the Gold Prince, Le Roy and Dives, kept working on and off into the 1930s, and Phelps Dodge took quartz from the Gold Prince as late as 1986.

You'll find population figures for Dos Cabezas online as high as 4,000. The documented numbers are smaller: 126 in the 1880 census, about 300 later in the 1880s and about 1,000 at the 1926 peak. We found no source behind the larger figure.

What's left

Ruins on the highway

The gate of the pioneer cemetery, 2021
The gate of the pioneer cemetery, 2021 · Photo: Marine 69-71, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Dos Cabezas is easy to see. AZ 186 runs straight through it, and adobe walls stand at the edge of the pavement. Older roofed buildings and newer homes sit among them, so some of what you see is somebody's house. The pioneer cemetery lies just west of town on the south side of the highway. It's private and kept up by the Dos Cabezas Pioneer Cemetery Association, a volunteer group that held its annual meeting and clean-up on May 23, 2026.

The mines are in the mountains to the north. The historic USGS sheets below follow the town through the century. The 1922 Willcox sheet shows a rail line reaching town from the northwest and labels the Mascot Mine in the hills above. The 1943 sheet spells the name "Dos Cabezos" and scatters mine symbols up Mascot and Philadelphia canyons. By 1978 the map shows the highway, a small street grid and the cemetery on the west edge of town.

  • Adobe walls along AZ 186
  • Older roofed buildings, some lived in
  • Pioneer cemetery (private, maintained)
  • Mine workings up Mascot and Philadelphia canyons
  • Street grid on both sides of the highway
USGS topographic map of Dos Cabezas with AZ 186 running through town
USGS The National Map, topo. AZ 186 crosses the townsite, with Casey Street to the north and White Street to the south.
Aerial view of Dos Cabezas: scattered buildings along a highway with dirt lanes on both sides
Aerial imagery, same area. Homes and ruins string along the highway; dirt lanes branch off on both sides.

Historic maps

Dos Cabezas on USGS maps, 1922–1996

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 Dos Cabezas, 1922
Willcox sheet, 1922, 1:125,000 · U.S. Geological Survey, public domain · catalog record

Map & directions

Getting there

Willcox is the closest town, about 15 miles away. From Tucson the drive runs east on I-10 to Willcox and then out AZ 186. Both routes stay on paved highway the whole way, and the ruins stand right beside the road.

USGS topographic map between Willcox and Dos Cabezas with the route along AZ 186 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 Willcox14.7 miabout 18 min
  1. Turn left onto East Maley Street (AZ 186).0.5 mi
  2. Maley Street becomes the Willcox–Bonita Highway. Stay on AZ 186 across the flats.5.4 mi
  3. Bear left at the fork to stay on AZ 186 toward the mountains. The pioneer cemetery is on the right just before town, and the ruins line the highway near Mascot Mine Road.8.8 mi
Google Maps directionsApple MapsOpenStreetMap

Road and safety notes

  • AZ 186 is paved all the way from Willcox. Any car will do.
  • The ruins, houses and cemetery are private. A 1997 guide described the town as private property with visitors welcome along the main road. Look and take photos from the highway.
  • The pioneer cemetery is maintained by volunteers. If the gate is open, stay on the paths and leave everything as you find it.
  • Old mine workings in the mountains north of town are dangerous. Stay out of shafts and tunnels.
  • Summers are hot. Carry water, and fill up in Willcox, the nearest place for fuel and food.

Photos

Dos Cabezas in photos

Visitor reports

Been to Dos Cabezas?

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.

Gold mining

More gold mining ghost towns

The nearest in Arizona.

Pearce's 1915 concrete jail behind an iron fence under an orange storm sky at sunsetGuide

Pearce

31.91, -109.82

Cochise County, Arizona

An 1894 gold strike made Pearce one of the richest camps in the territory. The mine is long closed, but the old townsite survives inside the living…

Living communityGold mining
The whitewashed American Flag ranch house under a flagpole, seen across a dirt road from the northGuide

American Flag

32.58, -110.72

Pinal County, Arizona

A small gold and silver camp of the 1870s and 1880s that left one building behind: Isaac Lorraine's adobe ranch house, which served as the area's…

By appointmentGold mining

All 96 gold mining ghost towns →

Nearby

Other sites near Dos Cabezas

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

Sources

Sources and credits

  1. ghosttowns.com, "Dos Cabezas": fact sheet fields (roads, legal description, climate, best time, remains, post office dates).
  2. Wikipedia, "Dos Cabezas, Arizona", retrieved October 2026: coordinates and elevation (GNIS).
  3. William Ascarza, "Mine Tales: Dos Cabezas was mining hotbed," Arizona Daily Star (undated online): Ewell Springs, the 1880 railhead, Laub, McCauley and the Mascot Copper Company, the Mascot townsite, the 1913 truck haul, the Mascot and Western Railroad, the 1928 decline.
  4. William Ascarza, "Mine Tales: Dos Cabezas Mountains near Willcox have history of gold production," Arizona Daily Star, December 2021: boundary survey camp, stage line, 1880s town, 1926 employment and population, aerial tram, production figures, the Gold Prince, Le Roy and Dives mines.
  5. azghosttowns.com, "Dos Cabezas" (William M. Mogan, last visit 1997): 1880 census count, private property with visitors welcome along the main road, cemetery location.
  6. Dos Cabezas Pioneer Cemetery Association, checked October 2026: private cemetery, volunteer upkeep, location on AZ 186, May 23, 2026 meeting and clean-up.
  7. N. H. Darton, USGS Bulletin 845, Guidebook of the Western United States, Part F (1933): the two granite knobs behind the name.
  8. Pull That Cork, "Willcox, Arizona, Part 1", August 2018: families living among the ruins.
  9. Jim Witkowski, "Adobe Ruin Picture of the Week", May 2022: the unsourced 4,000 population figure, a dozen or so buildings with three fit to live in, and residents you could count on one hand.
  10. National Park Service, Fort Bowie Plan Your Visit and Safety pages, as of October 2026: time to allow, picnic shelter, drinking water only at the visitor center.
  11. Rex Allen Museum, official site: days, hours and admission, as of October 2026. Old Pearce Preservation Association: the jail's first-Saturday season, as of October 2026.
  12. Elevation check: USGS 3D Elevation Program point query (about 5,080 ft). Routes: OSRM on OpenStreetMap data, October 2026. Status checked against the sources above on October 19, 2026.

Photo and map credits