Sierra Vista is Spanish for “mountain view,” and the Huachuca Mountains flank the city on its southwest side. This map of Sierra Vista prints Fort Huachuca, the Fort Huachuca Museum and Annex, Buena High School, Joyce Clark Middle School, Village Meadows Elementary School and the Oscar Yrun Community Center, from Fry out to Apache Flats, with Demonstration Hill, Huachuca Peak and Lyle Peak giving shape to the land.
Sierra Vista is a city in southwestern Cochise County, about 15 miles from the border with Mexico.
KNOWOL made this map in 2026 and gave modern data the look of a vintage atlas. The shaded relief of Demonstration Hill, Huachuca Peak and Lyle Peak comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the streets were drawn from Census Bureau files. The Fort Huachuca Museum and Annex was confirmed against the National Park Service and the National Register of Historic Places. The 2020 census counted 45,308 people in the city, which sits 4,623 feet above sea level and serves as the main commercial, cultural and recreational hub of Cochise County.
A fort at the foot of the mountains
The fort came first. On March 3, 1877, Captain Samuel Marmaduke Whitside led two companies of the 6th Cavalry to the base of the Huachuca Mountains and chose a site with sheltering hills and a stream that ran all year, and Camp Huachuca became a fort in 1882. From 1913 to 1933 it was the base of the “Buffalo Soldiers” of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, made up of African American troopers, and from 1916 to 1917 its commander was Charles Young, the first African American promoted to colonel. The post was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976, for its role in ending the Apache Wars and as the site of the Buffalo Soldiers, and Sierra Vista annexed it in 1971. The Fort Huachuca Museum fills two buildings on Old Post, the main museum and the Museum Annex across the street, and tells the story of the fort and the Army in the Southwest with special emphasis on the Buffalo Soldiers and the Apache War. Admission is free, though civilian visitors without a Defense Department ID card must pass a background check at the gate.
Fry, Buena and a contest winner
In January 1913 Oliver Fry and his two oldest sons came from Texas on the railroad and settled on 320 acres just east of the fort. The same year a group of dry land farmers settled nearby and called their place Buena, with a post office and a schoolhouse. The Frys rented the Carmichael store and ran its post office from 1927 to 1938, then opened their own store and the Fry Post Office, and the settlement took the name Fry. Fry opposed both incorporating and renaming the area: a 1955 attempt was rejected, a 1956 ballot failed 76 to 61, and landowners outside his property then went forward by petition on May 26, 1956. The new town left out the half square mile Fry owned, where the families of the fort’s Black officers lived along with other minority residents, and Fry is still an unincorporated pocket inside the city. Oliver Fry buried his wife, Elizabeth, there in 1919, and the Fry Pioneer Cemetery now holds more than 200 known graves, most of them unmarked.
The proposed town council held a radio contest for a name. The city clerk, Marie Pfister, asked her friend Nola Walker to keep the suggestions, and when the town was approved and they called Nola for the winner, she told them, without counting the votes, that her own entry, “Sierra Vista,” had won. On July 13, 2006, at a ceremony during the city’s 50th anniversary, Nola was granted “clemency” for it. Sierra Vista grew large enough to be classified as a city in 1961, and in 1973 Ethel Berger became the first female mayor in Arizona. In 1975 the town was the site of the first McDonald’s drive-thru: its owner, Dave Rich, wanted the business of soldiers from the fort, who weren’t allowed to wear their fatigues off the base except while driving or riding in a vehicle.
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: W Black Rd, W El Rancho Blvd, W Gambels Trl, W River Rd, W Railroad Dr, Ranch Trl, Dove Ln, Ridge Rd, Sylvia St, E Jefferson Rd, E Rockwell Pl, E Kc Williams Ln.
More street names, A to Z
Allison Rd, Brainard Rd, Canada Dr, Carter St, Chief Joseph Dr, Cll Coyote, Cushing St, Dale Ln, Durango Rd, E Adams Rd, E Apache Pointe Rd, E Busby Dr, E Charleston Rd, E Cll de la Palmera, E Cll del Tecolote, E Dake Rd, E Dakota St, E Escapule Rd, E Gilka Rd, E Hereford Rd, E Horsethief Draw Rd, E Larson Rd, E Lorna Ln, E Lower Ranch Rd, E Miller, E Nevada Dr, E Palo Alto Ln, E Ramsey Canyon Rd, E Ramsey Rd, E Ronald Reagan Pkwy, E Sooty Ln, E Taylor Way, E Thuma Rd, Fenced Mil Res Boundary, Garden Canyon Rd, Hatfield St, N Garden Ave, N Sanders Rd, Railroad Dr, Ramsey Rd, Roosevelt Rd, S Aqueduct Rd, Shawnee Dr, Sierra Vis, S Junkyard Ln, Sol Ave, Squier Ave, S Sunnyside Rd, Veterans Memorial Dr, Winchester Dr, Wood Rd.
Around the map
Buena High School is the only high school in the Sierra Vista Unified School District, and it also serves the high school students whose families live on Fort Huachuca. Its current building went up in the early 1990s with a large theater for the school and the community, the Klein Performing Arts Center, whose main auditorium seats up to 1,319 when its two pods are opened. The district also runs Joyce Clark Middle School and six elementary schools, Village Meadows Elementary School among them. The Huachucas, named by the Spanish for a Pima village that once stood north of the range, climb to 9,466 feet at Miller Peak. Sierra Vista is nicknamed the “Hummingbird Capital of the United States,” and bird watchers from all over the world come to Ramsey Canyon and the other canyons nearby; the Ramsey Canyon reserve is home to 15 hummingbird species. Demonstration Hill, Huachuca Peak, Lyle Peak, Apache Flats and the Oscar Yrun Community Center have their places on the sheet as well.
This Sierra Vista map makes 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 Sierra Vista home, below the Huachucas, and KNOWOL created it in 2026 to show the city as it looks today. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the Sierra Vista map.
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