Willcox began as a railroad whistlestop and grew into cattle country and then wine country, with the Pinaleño and Chiricahua mountains all around. This map prints the Railroad Avenue Historic District, the Schwertner House, Willcox Middle School and the Willcox Community Center.
Willcox is a city in northern Cochise County, in the Sulphur Springs Valley.
KNOWOL made this map in 2026 and gave modern data the look of a vintage atlas. The shaded relief of the landscape comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the streets were drawn from Census Bureau files. Historic sites such as the Railroad Avenue Historic District and the Schwertner House were confirmed against the National Park Service and the National Register of Historic Places. The 2020 census counted 3,213 people in the city.
From Maley to Willcox
The town was founded in 1880 as Maley, a whistlestop on the Southern Pacific Railroad, and it was put here because the spot sits about halfway between El Paso, Texas, and Phoenix. The station became an important supply point for the Army during the Apache Wars and a major shipping point for the cattle ranches and mines of southeastern Arizona. The town took the name of General Orlando B. Willcox, who commanded the Department of Arizona from 1878. The town’s page ties the renaming to a visit by the general in 1889, while the list of its historic properties says the townspeople first spelled his name with one L and corrected it in 1889. Willcox had been a Union general in the Civil War, and in 1895 he received the Medal of Honor for his gallantry at the First Battle of Bull Run. In the early 20th century the town he lent his name to was a national leader in cattle production.
Railroad Avenue
Railroad Avenue was the commercial center of Willcox and the Sulphur Springs Valley from the day the Southern Pacific came through in 1880, and the Railroad Avenue Historic District was listed on the National Register on May 27, 1987. Its Southern Pacific depot, built in 1880, now serves as City Hall, and the list of historic properties calls it the only remaining original redwood frame Southern Pacific station in Arizona. Along the avenue stand the Palace Saloon and Pool Hall of 1905, which the list calls the earliest panel brick commercial building in town, the Willcox Commercial Hotel of 1916, where traveling salesmen stayed, the Willcox Bank and Trust of 1917 and the Willcox Theater of 1936. The Schley Saloon building of 1893, a grocery by the eve of Prohibition, now houses the Rex Allen Museum and Cowboy Hall of Fame.
The Schwertner House on Stewart Street dates from 1880. Delso Smith built it as a reception center for Army officers, Mr. Schwertner bought it in 1893, and it was listed on the National Register on August 25, 1983. The Pablo Soto House is on Stewart Street too. Soto had been one of Tucson’s first schoolteachers, and in the early 1880s he moved to Willcox to sell goods at the Norton & Stewart store, which he and his brother later bought; around 1888 they opened what the list calls the first banking operation in Willcox, taking deposits from anyone. Stewart Street also holds the clubhouse of the Willcox Women’s Club, which raised money through the 1920s and gave land to the city so the Works Progress Administration could build it. Finished in 1936, it’s the only Pueblo Revival building in Willcox by its page’s account, and it’s also known as the Willcox Women’s Community Center.
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 Margarita Rd, Margarita Rd, Jonnie Dr, Lake View Dr, Fort Grant Rd, Hines Rd, W Rex Allen Dr, Caya Rd, Floyd Dr, N Haskell Ave, Moreman Ln, N Railroad Ave.
More street names, A to Z
Airport Rd, Arizona Ave, Bentley Dr, Bisbee Ave, Bowie Ave, Buckskin Ln, Church Rd, Circle Dr, Comet Dr, Conquistador Dr, Delos St, Del Villa Way, E Alexander Dr, E Bobby Cir, E Celia Dr, E Concho Dr, E Coyote Dr, E Fairway Dr, E Geronimo Dr, E Golf Course Dr, E Grant St, E Harvey Dr, E Jessie St, E Jodi Dr, E Juan Dr, E Linda Dr, E Maley St, E Marks Dr, E Marla Dr, E Pecos Dr, E Robert St, E San Joaquin Dr, E Sequoia Dr, E Sherry Dr, E Stewart St, E Sue Dr, E Valerie Cir, Haskell Ave, N Bisbee Ave, Nick Ln, Quail Dr, Railroad Ave, Railroad Maintenance Rd, S Border Ave, S Haskell Ave, S Mildred Cir, S Railroad Ave, S Valencia, Third Ave, W Airport Rd, W Wasson St.
The Arizona Cowboy
Rex Allen, “The Arizona Cowboy,” was born in 1920 on a ranch in Mud Springs Canyon, forty miles from Willcox. As a boy he played guitar and sang at local gatherings with his fiddle-playing father, and after high school he toured the Southwest as a rodeo rider. Beginning in 1950 he starred as himself in 19 Western movies, and later he played Dr. Bill Baxter in the television series Frontier Doctor, narrated Disney nature films and was the voice of the father in Disney’s Carousel of Progress. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Rex Allen Days began in 1951 in his honor and fills the first weekend of October with a parade, rodeos, a fair and a car show, and his ashes were scattered in Railroad Park, across the street from the museum, near a bronze statue of him. The country singer Tanya Tucker spent her early childhood in Willcox.
Wine and cranes
The high desert here swings widely between warm days and cool nights, which the town’s page says makes Willcox ideal for growing wine grapes. In 2016 it became Arizona’s second federally designated wine-growing region, and the Willcox region grows 74 percent of the state’s wine grapes, more than any other part of Arizona. The spring and fall wine festivals come on the third weekends of May and October. Five miles south of town lies the Willcox Playa, a dry lakebed left from the Ice Age Lake Cochise and a National Natural Landmark since 1966, partly for the thousands of sandhill cranes that roost there; some of the cranes that winter around Willcox come from as far away as Siberia. The Wings Over Willcox birding festival celebrates them every January. Back in town, the Elsie S. Hogan Community Library, Willcox Elementary School, Willcox Middle School and the Willcox Community Center have their places on the sheet along with the historic district and the Schwertner House.
This map of Willcox 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 Willcox home, along Railroad Avenue and beyond, 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 Willcox map.
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