User:Asiaticus/sandbox/Calabasas, Arizona
Calabasas, is a former populated place or ghost town, located within the Census-designated place, Rio Rico a suburb of Nogales, in Santa Cruz County, Arizona.[1]
History[edit]
Calabasas is a ghost town of the former Mexican settlement of old Sonora, established at the mouth of Sonita Creek on the Santa Cruz River, near the Mexican Presidio de Calabasas. It grew up serving the Presidio, travelers on the road between Tucson and the rest of Sonora to the south and the farmers and ranchers that established themselves within the area of protection against Apache raids provided by the Presidio garrison.
After the United States acquired this part of Sonora with the Gadsden Purchase, Presidio de Calabasas was the site of an American custom house in the deserted Presidio, and also four companies of the 1st U.S. Dragoons, that arrived on November 27, 1856. The Dragoons, patrolling the border, called it Camp Moore. Camp Moore was abandoned in March 1857 after another location, to the east in the San Rafael Valley, was chosen for a permanent fort that was christened Fort Buchanan. The post was still a custom house and was occasionally used by the troops.
The only remnant of this old settlement are the graves in the old Calabasas Cemetery. It was a graveyard also used by Fort Mason during and after the American Civil War. It is located amidst an industrial park on the west side of the Santa Cruz River, below its confluence with Potrero Creek.[1]
Reference[edit]
- Railroad Gazetteer, Volume 49, H. S. Crocker Company, 1899 New Mexico and Arizona Railway