Underrated Small Towns
Things to Do in Patagonia AZ: Southern Arizona’s Best-Kept Secret
William Davis -
Patagonia sits at 4,000 feet in the Santa Cruz Valley of southern Arizona, a town of 900 people surrounded by some of the most ecologically and scenically significant landscape in the American Southwest. It has a Nature Conservancy preserve that serious birders from around the world visit specifically.
It has wine tasting rooms within walking distance of its single...
Places
Bisbee AZ Pet Friendly Guide: Where to Stay, Eat & Explore With Your Dog (2026)
William Davis -
Bisbee is a remarkably good destination for dog travelers. The canyon streets, staircase neighborhoods, and outdoor dining culture of this small Arizona arts community make it a natural fit for well-behaved dogs whose owners don't mind a few logistical considerations specific to a hillside town.
This Bisbee AZ Pet Friendly Guide covers the pet-friendly hotels, dog-welcoming restaurants, hiking options, practical...
Two former copper mining towns. Two dramatic geographic settings. Two arts communities that grew out of economic collapse and cheap studio space. Two collections of galleries, restaurants, and historic hotels that draw visitors from across the Southwest. And yet Bisbee and Jerome are genuinely different places that deliver genuinely different experiences.
If you have time for only one, this comparison...
Bisbee has a reputation as an artsy, upscale small town with fine dining and boutique hotels, all of which is accurate. But Bisbee's most essential experiences cost nothing. The staircase streets, the canyon views, the gallery windows on First Friday evenings, the Lavender Pit at sunset, the street-level life of Brewery Gulch on a Saturday afternoon, these are free,...
There is something about Bisbee that makes people fall a little in love, with the place, and often with whoever they're traveling with. The narrow canyon streets, the Victorian architecture draped in bougainvillea, the candlelit bars on Brewery Gulch, the staircase walks that deliver you to unexpected overlook points just as the afternoon light is turning gold: Bisbee creates...
24 hours in Bisbee Az is genuinely enough to understand why people fall for this town, and genuinely not enough to see everything it offers. That tension is actually a good sign: it means the place has more depth than a single visit can exhaust.
This itinerary is built for travelers arriving the evening before or staying overnight. It covers...
Bisbee's single most underestimated travel advantage is its elevation. At 5,300 feet above sea level in the Mule Mountains of Cochise County, Bisbee runs 15–25°F cooler than Tucson and 20–30°F cooler than Phoenix year-round. When southern Arizona is at its summer peak and the desert floor bakes at 105°F, Bisbee is typically sitting at a comfortable 80°F with a...
At 4:00 AM on July 12, 1917, approximately 2,000 armed men fanned out through the residential neighborhoods of Bisbee, Arizona, and the nearby suburb of Warren. They carried rifles and shotguns. They wore white armbands for identification. They had deputization papers signed by Cochise County Sheriff Harry Wheeler.
And over the next several hours, they systematically rounded up 1,286...
In 1877, a cavalry scout named Jack Dunn was chasing Apache raiders through the Mule Mountains of southeastern Arizona Territory when he noticed something glinting in the rock. He reported the discovery to his commanding officer, whose contact list happened to include a San Francisco attorney named DeWitt Bisbee.
Within months, the land was claimed, a company formed, and...
Arizona has more ghost towns per square mile than almost any state in the American West. The combination of mineral wealth, remote terrain, boom-bust mining economics, and a late-19th-century settlement rush created hundreds of communities that flourished briefly and then emptied with almost equal speed when the ore ran out, the railroad bypassed them, or the water supply failed.
What...












