Courtland Arizona Territory Ghost Town, Part 05: The Cemetery, Uncle Simon Franklin and more

Volume 05:

Here we visit the Courtland Cemetery. There are close to 100 graves here including a former slave who served 30 years in the US Army.

"Uncle" Simon Franklin had the largest funeral in Courtland history. His headstone was vandalized (like a lot of those in ghost towns) and was recently replaced by the VA thanks to the efforts of local people that do maintenance on the cemetery.

Courtland was another mining town from the old west. Like many of these towns, it had many amenities and was quite big and successful. It is located just on the other side of the mountains from Gleeson Arizona; just a few miles.

Like most of these towns, it had quite a rich history. I thought I knew quite a bit about the place, but as you will see in the videos, I knew quite a bit less than I thought.

A 1927 Sanborn map of the town can be found here:

http://www.gleesonarizona.com/maps/Courtland_1927.pdf

Maps, photos, news articles from Courtland can be found at the Library of Congress:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/
https://www.loc.gov/collections/sanborn-maps/about-this-collection/

Special thanks to Ernie for giving me some good information, check out his website:

http://azbackcountryadventures.com/

Joe Bono, the owner of the Gleeson jail has a very informative website about all the towns in the area. There are pictures of areas on private property that we didn't visit, like the power plant.

Joe grew up in Gleeson and opens the jail/museum every first Saturday of the month, definitely check it out if you are in the area.

http://www.gleesonarizona.com/

Here are some links with pictures etc of areas that are on private property in Courtland as well as other information:

http://azbackcountryadventures.com/court.htm

Links about all things "the old west" from mining to railroads to Tombstone:

Tombstone Area Ghost Towns:

https://www.wyattearpexplorers.com/

Western Mining History:

https://westernmininghistory.com/

Abandoned Rails:

http://www.abandonedrails.com/

Forgotten Railways, Roads & Places:

https://www.frrandp.com/p/the-map.html

Friends of the san pedro river:

http://sanpedroriver.org/wpfspr/

***Music

Music from Tunetank.com
Track: Slow Flamenco by PineAppleMusic
https://tunetank.com/track/6355-slow-flamenco/

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