Charleston, Arizona - Remnants

Remnants

After it was abandoned, Charleston was briefly inhabited in the 1890s by a small population of Mexican immigrants who furthered the town's dismantling by using what was left of the wooden structures for kindling. Later, during World War II, the United States Army used Charleston as a practice site for urban combat, often using live ammunition. The site was known to the soldiers of nearby Fort Huachuca as "Little Tunisia" due to its climatic and geographic similarity to Tunisia in Africa. These activities, in and around 1943, led to further deterioration of the site. The town's location on the very bank of the San Pedro River also contributed to the demise of the town's remains as cliff erosion literally ate away at the land and the adobe structures.

All that is left of Charleston today are a few adobe ruins and scattered pieces of stone foundations, all of which are hidden amongst the underbrush. Across the river in Millville, a few stone embankments are all that remain of the mills. What little is left of the local cemetery is approximately a mile and a half north of the Charleston site, though it is difficult to locate, and very few traces remains. The site is part of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area (NCA) maintained by the Bureau of Land Management.

Charleston and Millville are not accessible by car and can only be reached by hiking up the San Pedro River. While trails were rough and unmarked for many years, the Bureau of Land Management has begun maintaining trails to and from the area. The remains of the town can be found on the west bank of the river with Millville's ruins directly across the river on the east bank.