The Town of Duncan
The biggest little town in the fertile Upper Gila Valley, and the last stop before the New Mexico border on the Old West Highway, Duncan goes about its business much as it did in the first years of the 20th century, blending Mexican, Latter Day Saints, Arkansas pioneer and other cultures. The beautiful Gila River winds through it, with windswept, walkable levees overlooking its course, guarded on all sides by mountains laden with secret back roads, waterfalls, abandoned mines and exotic wildlife. Duncan is free of the hustle and bustle of city life, a place where the traffic is light, the air is fresh, the sky is big, and people welcome visitors with warm interest.
Ten Reasons to Visit Duncan
1) Get away from it all. Or be the first to tell your friends. Duncan is still "undiscovered."
2) When did you last stroll along the banks of the Gila River? At sunset?
3) Or enjoy a scenic ride by car or bicycle to lush farmlands, historic mining sites, river vistas, rock-hounding treasuries?
4) Dining adventures: Ol' Jo's, Humble Pie, Hilda's and, a few miles away in York, Gimmee's (more on these below). And please note: Duncan is the easternmost point on Arizona's Salsa Trail.
5) For those who imbibe, there are three old-style taverns full of friendly folks. (But if you're a wine aficionado, we recommend that you BYO.)
6) Germaine's Feeds – a seemingly endless warren of fascinating rooms and out-buildings teeming with things to look at and buy. Proprietors Quinten and Carole Germaine have as many great stories as they have interesting and necessary goods to sell.
7) Big River Saddle Shop – come and watch a real cowboy and master saddle maker, Don Vandell, at work (and do it before he retires!). His wife Dianne is also a master leather crafter and sells a wide variety of artistic and practical items in their store.
8) Really good haircuts for only $10/women and $8 men. Call Sunny's at (928) 359-3289 to schedule. She does coloring and perms too. Treat the whole family without hurting your pocketbook.
9) Parades. Duncan has parades year-round. We'll email you as they come up.
10) Great atmosphere, great beds and superb breakfasts at The Simpson, and no television. Book the Sweetheart Room and take a long soak in a six-foot clawfoot tub.
Dining
Duncan is home to Ol' Jo's, an American-Mexican grill with colorful Old West ambience—a pleasant short walk from the Simpson along the Old West Highway. Ol' Jo's serves breakfast all day, and lunch and dinner, Tuesday through Sunday. On Mondays they open 4 pm to 9 pm for "Taco Night," a social institution of the town, featuring either karaoke or live music and dancing outdoors.
Humble Pie on Main Street, across from the Simpson Hotel, offers pizza, pasta dishes, salads and cannolis (dessert) at very reasonable prices. There are regular customers who drive 90 miles from Silver City because the pizza is really that good. We recommend their smoky-flavored sliced sausage added to a "vegetarian." The lasagna is superb too, and a single serving may be enough for two. Dinners only.
For lunch don't miss Hilda's Market, a general store and home to the only traditional one-table cocina we've ever run into in this region. Hilda's serves burgers as well as delicious standard Mexican fare. Hilda's granddaughter may be doing her homework at the one table but she has exemplary social graces and is happy to share space. You can also pick up for just $8 a hefty bag of frozen-fresh green chiles, all prepped and ready to throw in the pot.
Sixteen miles out on Highway 75 toward Clifton is Gimmee's, another Salsa Trail stop, with a fine menu of American and Mexican dishes along with soup and salad bars. We highly recommend their Tostada Parmesan, a big Mexican salad served in an elegant shell of crunchy toasted parmesan cheese, the filling made with beans, meat or both. Lunches and dinners, closed Sundays and Mondays.
The final dinnertime option, available seven nights a week, is the famous "Bonnie Burger," served with or without green chile, at either the Bonnie Heather or the Riverfront, Duncan's historic downtown taverns. It's a very good burger, and with a bag of chips and all the trimmings, it's a reasonable meal.
Other Stops Worth Making
Fairlene's Gym – new and sparking clean. Twelve different machines surrounding four running-in-place pads for raising your heartbeat to disco vitality. Fairlene offers a day rate for visitors—a whopping $3. No showers. Bring clean gym shoes, please. Hours are 6 am to 10 pm Monday-Friday and 6 am to 12 noon Saturday.
Greenlee Groceries – a bright, well-stocked small-town grocery plus hardware store in the building that once housed the pharmacy of famed Western painter Hal Empie (Empie was also Duncan's pharmacist). GG's has a well-stocked sandwich deli if you want a take-out lunch. Also on the Old West Highway.
The Outpost – on Highway 75 just across from the back side of the fairgrounds, this tiny store is remarkable for having somewhere on its few shelves almost anything you're looking for—sinus pain killer, bobby pins, several flavors of cake mix, for instance. And they kindly allow you to fill your drinking water bottles from a hose in back that feeds from an excellent deep aquifer. When we began our renovations on The Simpson, our 90-year-old neighbor, Bill Attaway, warned us about Duncan's salty city water: "I'll drink it if I have to, but I won't make coffee with it!" We agreed, so we haul all our drinking and coffee- and tea- water, and thank The Outpost.
Duncan Dollar – owner Susan and her family renovated the old Lehman's Mercantile and reopened it in 2007. It's a family-owned business, not a franchise, and it serves its community with a wide variety of low-priced essentials. On the Old West Highway.
Duncan's Origins
Lying five miles from the border of New Mexico, is in the extreme southeastern corner of Greenlee County, Duncan seems a world away from the dry mountains surrounding it. Almost every level acre is under cultivation, thickets of cottonwood trees shelter old farmhouses and ranches, and cattle and horses seem to outnumber people.
Duncan belongs to the Gila, the storied river of the west, the ageless natural highway whose passage through the mountain and desert southwest has served humankind since prehistoric times. Cliff dwellers, conquistadors, Apache warriors, mountain men, westering immigrants—each in their time has traveled its banks. In the mid-19th century, the Arizona communities along the Gila grew up around stage and freight stations and military posts that began to bloom in the valley as settlers arrived and battled hostile natives. The site of contemporary Duncan had its origin sometime in the 1870s. Called Purdy in the Post Office register of 1883, it was founded by Messrs. Purdy and Bachelor as a way station on an ore haulage line that linked the railhead in Clifton with Silver City, New Mexico. At that time, the town was located on the north bank of the Gila.
In 1881 and 1882, when the Arizona Copper Company was formed at Clifton-Morenci, an influx of Scottish capital financed the building of a narrow-gauge railway from Clifton to Lordsburg, New Mexico, to meet the Southern Pacific line. To accommodate the new "Arizona and New Mexico Railroad," the people of Purdy moved their settlement to the south bank of the river and renamed it Duncan, after Duncan Smith, the managing director of the Arizona Copper Company.
With the rail, settlement of the fertile, easily irrigated valley boomed. Soon Duncan was shipping far beyond the Southwest, to markets north and east. It prospered right into the 1950's, when the new Interstate 10 to the south diverted commercial traffic, contributing to a rising trucking industry. Duncan receded then into a quiet farming and ranching town for several decades, and its downtown slowly disintegrated.
Duncan Pride Society
In 2001, the founders of the Duncan Pride Society had a vision of working with town government, community leaders and area residents to preserve and enhance Duncan's overall image and historic value. They began by attacking decrepit downtown buildings with hammer and saw and paint, rounding up some of the best talent in town along with whatever interesting old planks, doors, windows, filigree and hardware they could lay hands on. The façade of the old movie theater, destroyed by the flood of 1983, came alive, even though if you looked carefully you'd see trees growing out from the rubble of its collapsed roof. The face of a long-abandoned corner gas station was remade into the "Bart Tipton Saloon." Most impressive was the transformation of a dreary old printing plant and adjacent vacant lots into "Spezia Square," with a beautifully and whimsically restored building, a gazebo and an outdoor stage.
With the Town of Duncan, the Pride Society raised funds to place historic street lamps along the downtown section of The Old West Highway (Highway 70). Two or three times a year you'll see the Pride folks out in the parks and along the railroad tracks, dressed in bright orange vests, picking up trash—that is, between planning the annual "Rampage," or the Christmas "Dazzle" or their float in the 4th of July or Christmas parade. They're gearing up for their next big project: with an award from the Arizona Department of Transportation and the Southeastern Arizona Governments Organization, they will break ground on the Sandra Day O'Connor Walkway, honoring the little girl from Duncan who grew up to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. The Sandra Day O'Connor Walkway will brighten up the highway as you enter town from the west.
