In 1877, Fort Huachuca was established at the cradle of the Huachuca Mountains in southeastern Arizona Territory. Its mission was to protect settlers from Apache attacks and secure the United States border with Mexico. However, its rugged isolation did not encourage settlement, and for many years the few civilians who lived in the area occupied outlying ranches.
Not surprisingly, exceptions were found in camp followers and prostitutes. Soiled doves, or ladies of the night, were housed on hog ranches — a euphemism for a cheap bordello — within spitting distance of the main gate. Inevitably a small, but ever-evolving community of sporting houses, gambling joints and rotgut taverns emerged. As one decade gave way to another, so did the names attached to this acreage of squalor — White City, Garden City, Buena, Fry and eventually, Sierra Vista.
“I first saw Fort Huachuca in 1918,” Paul J. Keating told an interviewer in 1966. “And I’ve seen some great changes here.”
Born in Mills County, Texas, in 1896, Keating migrated to the copper mines at Bisbee in 1918. He took a Texas bride at Tombstone in 1926, and a decade later joined the fledgling Arizona Highway Patrol. In January 1941, he left law enforcement and moved to the tiny community of Fry. “Without the money to buy one vehicle,” he recalled, Keating bought three automobiles on credit and established what became a flourishing transportation company.
Called Keating’s Motor Bus and Taxi Service, the business ultimately expanded to include 32 passenger buses and 27 taxicabs. When the fort doubled in size during World War II, this entrepreneur was ideally positioned to corner its business.
In 1941, Keating built what were among the first permanent structures near Fort Huachuca’s main gate, and two years later he purchased a Standard Oil filling station — seen here in a photograph taken in 1950. The corrugated tin building faced south on what is present-day Fry Boulevard, just east of Garden Avenue.
In a story that may be apocryphal, it is said that a madam — her name is lost to memory — used Keating’s filling station as a quasi staging ground for a mobile bordello. After filling the tank of her spacious LaSalle limousine, Madam X and one of her “girls” would pick up one of several anxious soldiers awaiting their arrival near the main gate. The LaSalle’s curtains were drawn and business was conducted as the madam drove east to the San Pedro River, then back to the fort for another customer. The madam was open for business day and night, and on army paydays the LaSalle’s tank might be filled several times.
In 1953, Fry’s first telephone directory was published and Keating’s name was among its eight listings. Lack of phone service was, however, deceptive — Fry was growing. Proximity to a major military installation, mild weather and cheap land drew newcomers to the burgeoning community at the base of the Huachuca Mountains.
After false starts and considerable wrangling, a large swath of land was incorporated in 1956 as Sierra Vista. It was not a move met by unanimous accord. Not surprisingly, a significant crimp in the process was a man named Erwin Fry, a large landowner whose family name had long identified the area. Fry isolated his holdings and turned up his nose at incorporation. Today, in the heart of Sierra Vista, exists a small unincorporated area called Fry.
Keating did not turn up his nose and, in time, served as the new city’s third mayor. Now, having passed it 50th year, Sierra Vista is the largest city in Cochise County with a population approaching 43,000.
— W. Lane Rogers. Photo courtesy of Fort Huachuca Museum.