In 2022 I participated in a the El Tour de Zona, a 3-day bicycle event that featured daily supported rides to areas of interest around Sierra Vista, Arizona. The third day of the event was an out-and-back ride to Tombstone, Arizona.
As it turns out, the only day of the year that one can safely ride a bicycle between Sierra Vista and Tombstone is during the El Tour de Zona. This is because the sheriff closes Charleston Road from about 9 AM to 3 PM on that day specifically for that event. At other times traffic along that road travels at nearly the speed of light and, as is true everywhere, drivers are not necessarily attentive to their driving tasks.
An Unexpected Discovery
As I rode from Sierra Vista to Tombstone on that day, I saw a small landmark sign signaling the presence of “Brunckow’s Cabin” and a notation that it was “Closed”. About a mile further up the road, I passed South Brunckow Road.
At the time I didn’t think much about it, I was on my way to Tombstone after all!
When I returned home after the event and reflected on what I had seen and experienced, I remembered the Brunckow’s Cabin sign and South Brunckow Road. I wondered, who was this Brunckow person?
An internet search quickly came up with information indicating that Fredrick Brunckow was the person and his cabin is “the bloodiest cabin in Arizona history”!
Fredrick Brunckow
Fredrick Brunckow was a graduate of the Freiburg University of Mining and Technology. He fled to America from Prussia in 1850 when the Polish government came after him for participating in a failed military insurrection two years prior, the Greater Poland Uprising.
Brunckow in America
Over the next few years Brunckow made his way west to the Arizona Territory by working various odd jobs; as a deckhand on a Mississippi River steamboat, as a shingle maker in Texas, and finally in 1856 he was recruited as a mining engineer for the Sonora Mining and Exploration Company.
He left the Sonora Mining and Exploration Company in 1858 and began working his own claim, the San Pedro Silver Mine, situated deep in Apache country, in an especially desolate section of the Sonoran Desert.
To help with the mining operation Brunckow hired mining engineers William Williams and his cousin James Williams as well John Morse, a chemist, and David Bontrager, a German cook. He additionally hired 10-12 Mexican nationals as laborers whose names are not recorded in any documentation.
It was on his claim near the mine that in 1859 (20 years prior to the 1879 founding of Tombstone, Arizona) on a hill overlooking the San Pedro River, Brunckow built an adobe cabin featuring a tin roof and a fireplace. Reports also indicate that on the site were a storage building and a small store, though these may have been the same structure.
Brunckow’s Cabin
Today, the ruins of cabin that Fredrick Brunckow built sits midway between the southern Arizona towns of Sierra Vista and Tombstone.
In the summer of 1860, a year after the cabin was constructed, Fredrick Brunckow became one of the first of many people to be murdered there.
The Beginning of the Bloodshed
On July 23, 1860, one of the mining engineers, William Williams, departed the cabin to buy supplies from Fort Buchanan, 35 miles to the west.
When Williams returned to the cabin 3 days later, at around midnight on July 26, he grew suspicious when no dogs barked at him and an unpleasant stench permeated the area. When he entered the small store Williams found that the store had been ransacked and provisions scattered about. Additionally his cousin, James Williams, was lying dead among the scattered debris, having been shot several times.
William Williams, fearing that whoever had perpetrated the crime might still be lurking around, immediately rode back to Fort Buchanan arriving there at about 6 AM.
The Investigation
A squad of solders was dispatched to investigate and when they arrived they found the bodies of the mining engineer James Williams, the chemist John Morse, and they found Fredrick Bruckow’s body run through with a rock drill and tossed down the shaft of his mine.
Note: a rock drill is a long, blunt iron rod with a textured bit on one end to chip through solid rock when the other end is struck with a large hammer.
Here is a photo of some miners of that era with their rock drills.
The German cook, David Bontrager, the livestock that had been kept at the claim as well as about $3000 worth of goods and all the Mexican laborers were missing.
Bontrager’s Eyewitness Account
Later that evening David Bontrager staggered into another mining camp near the Mexican border and told the story that after William Willams had left to get supplies at Fort Buchanan, two of the mine workers had come into the kitchen and held Bontrager prisoner while the James Williams, John Morse and Fredrick Brunckow were killed by the other mine workers. Bontrager was taken as a hostage across the Mexican border and then released because the murderous mine workers viewed him as “a good Catholic”.
That Was Only the Beginning
What followed in the next 30 years was a series of murders that establishes Brunckow’s Cabin to be the bloodiest cabin in Arizona history. At least twenty-one people were murdered there, many of whom are buried on site. Only a few unmarked graves have been identified.
Of course, the cabin is supposedly haunted…
“Many will tell you the unquiet spirits of the departed ones are won’t to revisit the glimpses of the moon and wander about the scene which witnessed their untimely taking off. The graves lie thick around the place.”
The Arizona Weekly Star- February 19, 1880
Cabin Stories
After the murders of Fredric Brunckow and his compatriots, the cabin passed through a series of owners, many of whom themselves were murdered or who killed someone at the site of the cabin.
One notable story is of five desperados who, after robbing a Wells Fargo bullion wagon, retreated to the cabin to divide up their loot. While engaged in deciding who would get what, they fell into violent disagreement. When they were subsequently found by lawmen, all five were dead having been shot by each other. The gold they had stolen was still stacked on the table in the cabin.
If you have an interest in such things you can read more of those stories in the Wikipedia article on Brunckow’s Cabin or the more prosaic, excellent article “The Bloody History of Brunckow’s Cabin” by Rhema Sayers.
Brunckow’s Cabin Today
I recently revisited the site of Brunckow’s cabin, bringing with me my drone and my hiking boots.
I drove from Sierra Vista on Charleston Road towards Tombstone, turning off on South Brunckow Road where I parking in a cleared off parcel just inside the fence after the turnoff.
From there I hiked about 100 yards down South Brunckow Road and set off cross country on an old closed jeep road that once allowed vehicle access to the Brunckow Cabin site.
About a hundred yards down that old road, in the Sonoran Desert scrub brush, I set up “Drone Base Brunckow”.
It was from there that I flew my drone and hiked down to the site of Brunckow’s Cabin which today is in ruins due to vandalism and the decay that time brings.
Here is Señor Trail at the site of the cabin.
Here is a gallery of views of the ruins.
Here is the drone video from this excursion
Sources
- Tombstone Chamber of Commerce, Tour of the Graveyard – John Van Houghton
- Wikipedia, Brunckow’s Cabin
- Rhema Sayers, “The Bloody History of Brunckow’s Cabin” in The Desert Leaf
- Ben T. Traywick, Some Ghosts Along the San Pedro, Red Marie’s, 1987
- Thelma Heatwole, Ghost Towns and Historical Haunts in Arizona, Golden West Publishers, 1981
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