Echoes of the Southwest

Getting you ready for the Halloween season!

Between the towns of Benson and Wilcox, AZ, in the Dragoon Mountains on a small hill, sits a gas station, gift shop and museum next to a Dairy Queen.  The large building clearly states what is inside; souvenirs, t-shirts, jewelry, gifts, museum, and in the center, "The Thing?".  It is a cool gimmick to get you to the store by littering in the highway with billboards to entice you into being curious enough to see what "The Thing?" is.  It will cost you a buck to check it out, but I will show you for free. The Thing sits in a brick coffin with a glass top in the last of the three sheds full of antiques and other unusual items. The glass on top made it difficult to take pictures without getting reflections of myself or whatever was near it.  I figured out a neat trick by putting the camera right on the glass and taking the picture.  It gets a close up picture of the mummy and her baby.  To get her entire body, I moved the camera down the coffin and too...

What is the Thing?  Along Interstate 10, from Tucson, Arizona to El Paso, Texas, you see billboards with messages to tickle your interests.  One will say, "The Thing?", and a few miles more you will see "What is it?" and down the road a ways another might say "Mystery of the Desert".   Located on a hilltop between Benson and  Wilcox , Arizona, you will see a large red, yellow, blue filling station and gift shop.  Inside you will find the typical southwest roadside gifts such as bows, arrows, moccasins, baseball caps, turquoise  jewelry  and The Thing? shot glasses, T-shirts and other items with the logo on it. What is it?  I sounds like a  novelty  which peaks enough people's interest to get them to stop and check it out.  For a dollar, you walk past the register and into a tiny outside courtyard.  In the courtyard is three prefabricated corrugated steel sheds full of odd exhibits.  You will see unusual wood ...

The Arizona desert might not be the first place you would think a mummified body would be found. In fact, on several occasions throughout history a carcass was discovered buried or lying on the desert floor in a dried up condition. One such mummy was that of a cowboy found near the town of Gila Bend. It was in 1895 when a couple of rough-riders traveling on their horses across the desert came across an unusual site. It was a body of a man which appeared to have been lying there for a brief period and looked well preserved. The cowboy mummy was given the name, Sylvester, and was thought to have once been a 19 th century rancher or perhaps a gambler. Hypothetical stories started circulating about how Sylvester was probably caught cheating, then shot, and bleed to death trying to escape. They go on to say that while fleeing, he fell off his horse, landed on the desert dirt, and was covered with blowing sands. The sands dried his body overnight preserving the corpse resulting in the...

This is a bizarre story of a mummified man found in a bathtub in a cottage located in Phoenix. It was 2008 when the Phoenix police responded to a call by the owners of a group of cottages. They led the police to cottage #4 which was rented out to an adult male named Larry since 1995. Larry seemed rather quiet, kept to himself, and paid his rent on time until 2007. When they went to confront him on the nonpayment, they found the cottage abandoned with his items still in the premises. Larry never returned so the owners decided to clean up the place and remove his stuff. They found the place stacked from floor to ceiling with trash, and personal items in such  deplorable  conditions. The smell was horrendous and for the owners it was a hording nightmare. With the assistance of others, they started removing the debris. When they finally reached the bathroom, they found the tub covered with plywood and plastic. They removed the items from the tub and found it full of dirt and...

What is the Thing?  Along Interstate 10, from Tucson, Arizona to El Paso, Texas, you see billboards with messages to tickle your interests.  One will say, "The Thing?", and a few miles more you will see "What is it?" and down the road a ways another might say "Mystery of the Desert".   Located on a hilltop between Benson and Willcox, Arizona, you will see a large red, yellow, blue filling station and gift shop.  Inside you will find the typical southwest roadside gifts such as bows, arrows, moccasins, baseball caps, turquoise  jewelry  and The Thing? shot glasses, T-shirts and other items with the logo on it. What is it?  I sounds like a  novelty  which peaks enough people's interest to get them to stop and check it out.  For a dollar, you walk past the register and into a tiny outside courtyard.  In the courtyard is three prefabricated corrugated steel sheds full of odd exhibits.  You will see unusual wood carvings...

This creepy looking mummified creature is in a glass box, near the entrance of the Bird Cage Theatre’s display room. Many wonder how a mermaid would be found in the desert, so far from a body of water. The best explanation is that sometime in 1934 someone donated it to the Bird Cage Theatre’s tiny little museum. Whatever it is and however it got there, it is still a weird little artifact.  Don't you just love the look on the face of the blowfish above?  He looks like he is either in agony or singing.

  There are many strange stories in the Arizona files. One that is told is about the mummy found in the desert near Gila Bend nicknamed “Sylvester”. Many believe that he once was a 19th century cowboy, a con that loved to play cards. Stories are told that he finally got caught cheating and was shot in the stomach. He made a hasty exit while bleeding profusely from his wound. He got as far as Arizona’s Gila Bend desert when he fell off his horse and died face down in the sweltering heat. Shortly afterwards, he was covered by the blowing sands, which appeared to have dried his body overnight. This apparently preserved his body resulting in the mummified form he was found in. The more believable story was that he was found shortly after death and preserved in a high level of arsenic. Arsenic was used to stop the physical occurrences of a corpse rotting by killing bacteria and insects that invaded it. This custom of using arsenic was found to be poisonous by the 1900’s and never ...