Two Guns

 Two Guns (an AZ ghost town) has been on my Wanna See list for sometime. I don't know if I would say Bucket List, but a Wanna See List. I had first heard of Two Guns from other AZ geocachers I know but other than a cave, I knew very little about Two Guns. So when our very last Arizona Route 66 Adventure Lab was taking us to Two Guns, I was quite excited and more than a little uninformed!

Two Guns, originally known as Canyon Lodge, started out as a modest trading post at the beginning of the 19th century, run by a couple of homesteaders by the names of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel B. Oldfield. 

By the early 1920s the road through town, known as the National Trail Highway, became the preferred route across Diablo Canyon. When Earle and Louise Cundiff blew into town, they brought 320 acres of the land, making Canyon Lodge a busy stop for travelers. By the late ’20s, what was once the National Trail Highway was blossoming into the famed Route 66, and the once-isolated trading post was evolving into a bustling stop for incoming drivers needing gas, food, and oil.

entrance to the zoo*

This quickly escalating prosperity caught the attention of a man named Harry Miller. A well-educated veteran of the Spanish-American War and an ostentatious publicist, Miller was an eccentric man who claimed to be full-blooded Apache and was known for his garish and unpleasant demeanor. Wanting a piece of the action, Harry “Two Guns” Miller allegedly struck a deal with the Cundiffs to lease a business site for ten years.

the back side of the zoo entrance

Under Miller’s watch, the trading post was renamed Two Guns and turned into a full-blown tourist trap. He grew out his hair and braided it, taking on a persona by the name of Chief Crazy Thunder. He started a zoo with chicken-wire cages that held mountain lions and other native Arizona animals.

remains of the large animal cages

Apache Death Cave with ramp leading down the canyon wall

brave people can still enter the cave today and explore

Two Guns was the site of a mass murder of Apaches by their Navajo enemies in 1878. Some Apaches had hidden in a cave at Two Guns to avoid detection, but were discovered by the Navajos, who lit sagebrush fires at the cave's exit and shot any Apaches trying to escape. The fire asphyxiated 42 Apaches, after which they were stripped of their valuables. The murder site is referred to as the "death cave". ~ Wikipedia

back to Harry Miller...

Miller started tours down into a canyon cave now called Apache Death Cave, where 42 Apache men met their death in battle. The story of the cave was interesting in its own right, but Miller believed that the tale needed something more. He cleaned up the remaining bones he found in the cave, built fake ruins, and repurposed the tomb into a “cave dwelling.” In a macabre commercial stroke of genius, he saved the skulls of the ill-fated Apache and sold them as souvenirs. In order to make the cave a bit more tourist-friendly, he also strung up some electric lighting, threw in a soda stand, and renamed the death cave the “Mystery Cave.”

rock remains of the house Miller built over the cave and the rest of the canyon looking west

The terms and broad wording of Miller’s ten-year lease had always been a source of tension between him and Earl Cundiff, and that tension finally came to a head on March 3, 1926. During a heated dispute over the lease, Miller shot Cundiff in cold blood. For unknown reasons, Miller was acquitted at the trial. While Miller didn’t go to prison, he suffered in other ways. Shortly after his trial, Miller was mauled by a mountain lion on two separate occasions. He also was bitten by a poisonous Gila monster, which led to an illness and a completely swollen arm.

looking east from the bridge

first bridge built across the canyon in 1915

this bridge built in 1938

Miller's zoo and most of the original tourist attractions were erected on the north side of the canyon. Many ruins and standing buildings are on the south side of the bridge.

In 1929, a huge fire would gut the trading post at Two Guns, and when the widow Cundiff tried to prove her claim on the homestead land, Miller protested, claiming that the land was his because he was there before them, which was a bold-faced lie. After $15,000 worth of court actions later, Cundiff managed to keep ownership of the land – Miller would leave soon after. Even without Miller, Two Guns and its inhabitants continued to suffer. Route 66 was rerouted to the opposite canyon, taking its travelers and their money with it. Louise Cundiff and her new husband, Phillip Hersch, had to rebuild everything in Two Guns, including the zoo, on the opposite canyon just to keep the town going. Two Guns was finally sold in the 1950s, and doomed to be leased and abandoned numerous times until 1960.

more building remains*

remains of the garage - other building remains just south of the garage behind fencing

In 1960 a man named Dreher revitalized the area with a restaurant, gift shop, gas station, and even another shot at a zoo. He created tourist trails to the cave, and began exploring the possibilities of touring the cavern where all of those Apache warriors Miller claimed to be descended from lost their lives. 

With Interstate 40 on its way to completion, Two Guns would have its own dedicated exit ramp, which meant tourists would once again be passing through the town. All was going splendidly – until a huge inferno swallowed up the entire place in 1971. 

That was be the last time Two Guns would ever be inhabited. 

Two Guns is now considered an abandoned ghost town. The ruins of the zoo and the gutted gas station still stand, and you can still visit the cave. In 2011, Russell Crowe purchased Two Guns to film a Westworld remake.

There are two water towers remaining. I bet there were close to 100 stone buildings in ruins on the two sides of the canyon. It was getting close to sundown when we were there. I would have liked to have more time to explore and take photos. Oh well... There was a KOA campground with a swimming pool, but the building is demolished. Two Guns must have been quite the place in its Glory Days, but like so many of the places we have seen in northern AZ while traveling to and through the hamlets and tourist attractions popular before the days of Interstate highways, they have all seen better days.

I visited many sources to be better informed about Two Guns, but the information I have copied is pretty close to every source I explored. If you want to know more about Harry Miller and his exploitations, just Google Two Guns.

Native artifacts found at Two Guns have been dated to between 1050 and 1600.

* not my photos

Italicised text from https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/two-guns, except where noted from Wikipedia