Pinal City - Arizona
Posted by: 
adenium
N 33° 16.640 W 111° 08.453
12S E 486880 N 3682041
Pinal City was the milling site for the nearby Silver King mine, five miles to the northeast. Pinal City's post office was established on April 10th, 1878 and was discontinued November 28th, 1891.
Waymark Code: WM8G50
Location: Arizona, United States
Date Posted: 03/28/2010
Views: 26
Originally named Picket Post, At its height, Pinal City had a population of 2000 residents, a bank, a church, several stores and saloons, a hotel, and its own newspaper, "The Pinal Drill." Picket Post was renamed Pinal City on June 27, 1879. The devaluation of silver made the mines unprofitable and the town quickly dwindeled. By 1890, only ten people were left. Very little remains of Pinal City today. The remains of the fountain of the mill site are still visible.
Perhaps the biggest claim to fame of Pinal City is that this is where Mattie Blaylock, Wyatt Earp's common law wife, met her end. While living in Tombstone, she had became addicted to laudanum. She left Tombstone for good in 1882, bound for California, but moved to Pinal City, a town that she and Wyatt had stopped at in 1879 en route to Tombstone. By this time, Pinal City was a shadow of its former self. On July 3, 1888, Mattie Blaylock committed suicide by taking a lethal dose of laudanum. She was buried in the Pinal City cemetery.
Also of interest, nearby at N 33° 16.963 W 111° 08.356 are a set of wagon track gouged into the soft volcanic rock. These were from mule-driven wagons carrying silver ore from the Silver King mine to the Pinal City mill for processing.