Venezia

Overview

A little Venice in Crooks Canyon

Venezia sat at about 6,230 feet in Crooks Canyon, on the Senator Highway roughly 16 miles south of Prescott and 1.3 miles north of Palace Station. An Italian settler, F. Scopel, named it in the early 1900s for his home city of Venice. It was a stage stop and a mill town for the gold mines in the surrounding hills, never a big one. At its peak in 1925 about 75 people lived here.

The post office arrived in April 1916, moved over from the camp of Maxton. It was one office shared by three camps, which followed the miners from Goodwin to Maxton to Venezia and back to Goodwin as the mines rose and fell. Venezia kept it until June 1935. By then a 20-stamp mill was crushing ore from the mines of Crooks Canyon, among them the Trapshooter Reilley, Crook, Venezia, Starlight and Mount Union, but the ore gave out during the 1930s and the town went with it.

The buildings stood southeast of the mill, across Starlight Creek. They were still standing in some form until the 1970s, when the Forest Service dynamited and bulldozed them as a hazard to visitors. What's left is rubble, the mill's concrete foundations and the mine openings in the hillside behind it.

Timeline

Twenty years of mail and milling

1. Early 1900sF. Scopel, an Italian settler, names the place Venezia after his home city of Venice.
2. 1894–1935One post office moves among three camps eight miles apart: Goodwin from 1894, Maxton from 1901, Venezia from 1916, then Goodwin again.
3. Apr 1916The Venezia post office opens. One source dates it April 1, another April 16.
4. 1925The village peaks at about 75 people, with a store, a stage stop and a saloon.
5. Early 1930sA processing mill goes up to serve the mines of Crooks Canyon. Museum photos of the stamp mill date from 1932–33.
6. Jun 1, 1935The post office closes and moves back to Goodwin. The mines play out during the 1930s and the town empties.
7. 1968A Las Vegas company stakes new claims at Venezia and other old mines nearby.
8. 1970sThe Forest Service dynamites and bulldozes the buildings as a safety hazard.
9. 1974The USGS Groom Creek map marks the spot only as Venezia (Site).
10. 2009A research project reports concrete mill foundations, open adits, a bench seat between two trees and what may be two graves.

Crooks Canyon

The mill and the mines

The ridges and canyons here run from about 6,200 to 7,400 feet, mostly granite cut by rhyolite dikes. In the early days the mines worked the oxidized ore near the surface, rarely deeper than 200 feet. Sulphide ore went to the 20-stamp mill at Venezia or to a second mill at Mount Union. The Sharlot Hall Museum holds photographs of the Venezia mill and a large adit under construction in 1932–33, listed under the Trapshooter Reilley Mine.

At Venezia itself an adit ran about 200 feet north along what miners took to be an extension of the Crook Mine's vein. A 200-foot shaft below the camp found nothing worth working. About half a mile south, a short tunnel produced some rich ore from a vein about two feet wide. The Arizona Pioneer & Cemetery Research Project puts the combined output of these mines at about $500,000 at 1930s prices.

In 1968 a Las Vegas outfit, Searchlight Exploration, staked a 1,500-by-600-foot claim at Venezia under the name Lucky Break Mine.

The researchers who wrote up the site in 2009 saw no sign of recent mining beyond a little placer work in the creek.

What's left

Foundations, adits and a bench

Accounts differ on how much survives. An undated listing says nothing is left. Philip Varney, writing in 1980, found scattered rubble, a picked-over dump and a bench seat between two trees, and quoted a lifelong resident who said the buildings had been torn down a few years earlier. Researchers from the Arizona Pioneer & Cemetery Research Project, writing in 2009, found the bench still there, along with the concrete foundations of the mill, building foundations, two adits behind the mill, one of them deep, and what looked like two graves on a hill across the creek, marked by stones, with the remains of a wooden cross on a tree.

On the 1947 USGS map Venezia is a row of small building squares along the Senator Highway, with Palace Station and its cemetery just to the south. By 1974 the map says only Venezia (Site), with a prospect mark beside it where Starlight Creek meets Crooks Canyon.

• Concrete mill foundations
• Building foundations
• Rubble and an old dump
• Two adits behind the mill
• Bench seat between two trees
• Possible graves across the creek

Historic maps

Venezia on USGS maps, 1903–1974

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.

19031:125,00019471:62,50019741:24,000

Map & directions

Getting there

Prescott is the nearest city. The Senator Highway (Forest Road 52), the southern continuation of Mount Vernon Avenue, runs through Prescott National Forest right past the townsite, about 16 miles from town by the research project's count. Our router can't follow the Senator Highway here. The routes below loop west on AZ 89 and Wagoner Road, then come in on Crooks Canyon Road and unnamed forest tracks and stop about 0.8 mile south of the townsite. We haven't driven them, and we don't recommend them over the Senator Highway.

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

Photos

Have photos of Venezia?

We haven’t added photographs of Venezia yet. If you’ve visited, share your photos and a field report below.

The Sharlot Hall Museum holds 1930s photographs of the mill.

Visitor reports

Been to Venezia?

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 Venezia

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

• Goodwin3.3 mi SE · Yavapai
• Walker4.9 mi NE · Yavapai
• Catoctin6.9 mi W · Yavapai
• Glen Oaks8.3 mi NW · Yavapai
• Big Bug8.8 mi NE · Yavapai
• Hooper9.0 mi S · Yavapai
• Cleator13.1 mi SE · Yavapai
• Crown King13.7 mi S · Yavapai

Sources

Sources and credits

1. ghosttowns.com, "Venezia": fact sheet fields (roads, legal description, climate, remains), the April 16 post office date.
2. Wikipedia, "Venezia, Arizona", retrieved October 2026: coordinates (GNIS) and elevation.
3. Arizona Pioneer & Cemetery Research Project, Kathy Block, "Venezia, Arizona" (2009; archived copy): the naming, location, shared post office and April 1 date, 1925 population, geology and mines, production, the 1968 claim, Varney's 1980 description and the 2009 visit.
4. Sharlot Hall Museum photo archive, "Overview of Stamp Mill at Trapshooter Reilley Mine" (1932–33): the mill's date, the mines it served, peak population, the 1930s decline and the Forest Service demolition.
5. Overland Expo, "Trips & Trails: Crown King Road and Senator Highway" (January 2022): road surface, vehicles and seasons.
6. KNAU, "Some Prescott forest roads impassable following monsoon storms" (August 2022): storm damage on the Senator Highway.
7. USGS historical topographic maps: Bradshaw Mountains 1903, Mt Union 1947 (Venezia's buildings and Palace Station) and Groom Creek 1974 (Venezia (Site)). Elevation: USGS 3D Elevation Program point query. Routes: OSRM on OpenStreetMap data, October 2026, which also names Mount Vernon Avenue as the start of the Senator Highway. Status checked against the sources above on October 19, 2026.

Photo and map credits

• Area base map, topo and aerial imagery: USGS The National Map (public domain). Palace Station placed from the 1947 Mt Union sheet.
• Historic maps: USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection (public domain): Bradshaw Mountains 1903, 1:125,000; Mt Union 1947, 1:62,500; Groom Creek 1974, 1:24,000.