The man who founded this town wanted it named Rollin, after himself, and the people who lived here petitioned the Postmaster General for Patagonia instead. This map prints the Patagonia Public Library and Cady Hall, Patagonia Elementary School, Patagonia Union High School, Richardson Park, the Patagonia Youth Enrichment Center and The Patagonia Museum, with Sonoita Creek giving shape to the land.
Patagonia is a town in Santa Cruz County, in the valley of Sonoita Creek.
KNOWOL made this map in 2026 and gave it the look of an old atlas. The shaded relief of the landscape comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the streets were drawn from Census Bureau files. The Patagonia Public Library and Cady Hall was confirmed against the National Park Service and the National Register of Historic Places. The town lies between the Santa Rita Mountains to the north and the Patagonia Mountains to the south, on State Route 82, and 804 people lived here at the 2020 census.
Sonoitac, silver and a name from South America
The land here gave Native American communities good hunting and fishing, and archaeologists have found the remains of villages, work sites and petroglyphs around town. The area was a Tohono O’odham ranchería, a seasonal village, called Sonoitac. Father Eusebio Francisco Kino came as a missionary in 1692, and the area became part of his Mission Los Santos Ángeles de Guevavi. Sonoita Creek takes its name from an abandoned Pima mission in the high valley near Sonoita.
German Quiroga, president of the Patagonia Museum, says Welsh miners came here from Patagonia, at the southern tip of South America, and that the mountains the Native Americans called Chihuahuillas reminded them of the Andes, and they began calling them the Patagonia Mountains. Prospectors were mining the silver-rich mountains east of Sonoita by the mid-1850s. Rollin Rice Richardson, a Civil War veteran who made a fortune in mining, hired Tucson surveyor J.C. Green to plot the settlement in 1896, and in 1899 he applied for a post office. He wanted the town named Rollin, but residents opposed it and asked the Postmaster General to name it for the nearby mountains, and in 1900 Patagonia became the town’s official name.
Click to explore a larger preview. The digital watermark does not appear on printed maps.
Names on this map
These names are printed on this map.
Streets and roads: Pso de Los Suenos, Cam la Paz, Patagonia Hills Rd, Temporal Rd, Gringo Rd, Creek Rd, Crosscreek Rd, Emily Ln, Sonoita Ave, Costello Dr, Smelter Ave, Harshaw Ave.
More street names, A to Z
Copper Cir, E Patagonia Hwy, Forest Dr, Harshaw Rd, Naugle Ave, Red Mountain Ct, San Antonio Rd, Sonoita Dr, Trailwood Ct.
A railroad town, then a home for writers and birders
In 1900 a two-story railroad depot went up, and Patagonia became the commercial center of the county’s mining district, and ranching and the cattle industry played an important role too. By 1917 the town had running water, an opera house, three hotels, a schoolhouse, two parks and several stores and saloons. It incorporated in 1948, and the railroad was abandoned in 1962. Cady Hall was built in 1901 as the Patagonia Hotel by local businessman John Cady, a one-story plastered adobe in the Spanish Colonial Revival style, and over the century it served as a hotel, a boarding house, a church, a library and a social hall. The Patagonia Women’s Club bought it in 1947 and gave the library space from 1957. It was restored in 1990, listed on the National Register in 1992, and it still houses the Patagonia Public Library.
Sonoita Creek flows past the town and its bird sanctuary, and the Nogales page says the Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Sanctuary draws visitors from around the world for its bird life. Patagonia Lake State Park, southwest of town, holds a lake made by damming the creek, and the park takes in the Sonoita Creek State Natural Area, Arizona’s first major state natural area. Novelist and poet Jim Harrison lived in Patagonia and died at his writing desk at home here in 2016 while drafting a poem. MacArthur Fellow Gary Paul Nabhan, a writer and ethnobotanist, lives on a homestead near town, where he works to restore nectar corridors for pollinators. Hilde Lysiak, the youngest member of the Society of Professional Journalists, published her Orange Street News here from 2019 to 2020, and the Apple TV+ series Home Before Dark was inspired by her life. Patagonia Elementary School, Patagonia Union High School, Richardson Park and the Patagonia Youth Enrichment Center are printed on the sheet.
This map of Patagonia is a good addition to an office, library or den, and it can help teach children the geography and history of the area. It’s made for anyone who calls Patagonia home, along Sonoita Creek, and KNOWOL created it in 2026 to show the town as it looks today. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the Patagonia map.
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