Souvenir Postcard of Old Hereford in 1932, courtesy of the Bisbee Mining Museum in Bisbee, Arizona.

Nestled near the San Pedro River Valley, the small town of Hereford Arizona was founded in the 1800s as a railroad town. Cattle pens were created for shipping cattle to market. The railroad line ran through Hereford carrying ore from the mines in Cananea to the smelters in Benson and Bisbee. Ranch houses sprang up, with several small ranches in the plains, near present-day Sierra Vista, Hereford and Mule Mountains. Between the 1940s and the 1960s, the former residents moved elsewhere: Bisbee, Sierra Vista, Douglas, Naco, and even to other states. The buildings were torn down in the 1960s, leaving barely any trace behind. The rails were finally pulled up in 2007, finally putting Old Hereford in the “ghost town” category.

“Hereford, named after a territorial lawyer, Benjamin Hereford, was founded in 1880, and there were several small mines doing very well in the nearby hills until around 1902 when they started playing out. Like many other places along the San Pedro, cattle raising and farming took the place of the loss of the mines’ productivity. The El Paso & Southwestern railroad put in shipping pens and some of these are still here. The community always had several rodeos each year and always drew people from far and wide. In 1904, the first Wells Fargo Station and Post Office were built. Some of the most famous cattlemen held interests near Hereford. One was John Slaughter who moved to the San Bernardino Ranch 16 miles east of present-day Douglas in 1884. In 1885, Colonel William Greene moved his headquarters to Hereford and built one of the finest homes in the area. He also shipped most all of his cattle from Mexico and the United States from the shipping pens in Hereford. Frank Moson was another rancher who owned one of the finer cattle ranches in the county. The old store at Hereford was owned and operated by P. J. Wetzel from 1914 to 1920; he also dealt in a lot of prospecting where he did the grubstaking and, unfortunately, things did not turn out so well for him. There is still cattle raising in the area and farming along the river. A few cattle corrals are still here along the Southern Pacific Railroad, but like so many other small communities in Cochise County and southern Arizona, Hereford has become another ghost town.” – Cochise County, Arizona, Past & Present by Ervin Bond.

When Sierra Vista was cropping up in the 1950s-1960s, Old Hereford was a shell, a ghost town of its former self. Everything moved west across the San Pedro in the 1960s, the buildings of Old Hereford were torn down/demolished/destroyed, with the rail bed and the landscape in general were bulldozed smooth. The area now known as Hereford (or “Greater Sierra Vista”) was platted in the early 1960s; the transition to the new area closer to Sierra Vista and Fort Huachuca was underway. The Post Office relocated to its present location near the signal of Hwy 92 and Hereford Rd, about 9 miles west of its old location, the remnants of which are not there. The vast ranch lands of many ranchers were sold off and rezoned for residential use. Now there are lots of homes, both site-built and manufactured, as well as a “new” Post Office, with a few restaurants nearby.

I’d love to hear from anyone who has any information regarding Old Hereford not covered on this site. Please put Hereford History in the subject line.