Two Guns Trading Post & Canyon Diablo Bridge

Two Guns is located south of I-40 exit 230.
GPS: 35.115414, -111.090966

As much as possible I've tried to organize the rest of this page in order from east to west.

Pulling into Two Guns today you see an abandoned 1970 gas station on the left.

The abandoned KOA campground is set back from the main entrance past a couple of large (water?) tanks. As of 2023 the KOA office is laying flat on the ground in a pile of ruble. Two Guns was getting close to the end of it's run by the time the gas station and KOA opened in the late 1970s.

The first tank along the road to the KOA is painted with a two gun toting cowboy. Could this be the towns namesake?

The second tank is festooned with the image of a coonskin cap wearing pioneer sporting a long gun of some kind. Sadly the lower part of this tank has been covered with graffiti.

On the right at the main entrance is the KOA sign and this abandoned and dilapidated building, it's function is still a mystery to me.

Heading west on the road closest to the freeway you can see this building off to the south, it was the ticket office for what they called the Apache Cave. From here you walked down a path past a souvenir shop and across a wooden bridge to get to the cave. What's left of the bridge, if anything, may not be safe to use.

In 1924/25 Joe Secakuku, a Hopi Indian also known as Chief Yellowfeet had arrived at Canyon Lodge. He had given up his eight year run as leader of the Indian ceremonies at the Grand Canyon to build and promote tourist attractions here. It seems like promoting the cave was his main effort and at one time he and Harry "Indian" Miller planned install a concrete dance floor in one of the larger spaces.

The reality of the often repeated legend of the "Apache Death Cave" about an 1878 conflict between Navajo and Apache Indians at the cave seems to be questionable.

These rock walls are at the corner where you turn to get to the mountain lion building. They surrounded a large Two Guns sign that was visible from the freeway which can be seen on the far right in this photo. A few hundred feet turned Two Guns from a thriving little tourist trap into a ghost town. If you are headed east when you see the Two Guns Exit 230 sign look to your right, you'll see these walls and a bit beyond the you'll see the Mountain Lion building.

These two columns supported the canopy over the entrance to the Two Guns Town store and coffee shop. The building burned down in 1971. It was directly across the driveway from the wall mentioned above, seen on the right in this photo. The power pole that appears to be between the columns is actual a fair distance behind the columns. The wall, sign and Two Guns Town were among the later efforts to promote business here. The sign fronted the post 1938 alignment of the Mother Road, which is now buried under I-40. A short distance west on the driveway/road between the wall and the columns is a foundation ruins that I think was the "modern" motel that also burned down in 1971.

This is actually the second zoo building, the road was realigned in 1938 and this version of the zoo opened after that.

View from the back of the Mountain Lions Building

The 1915 Canyon Diablo Bridge was easily seen, but behind a fence when approached from the Mountain Lion ruins to its west. This bridge carried Route 66 from 1926 to 1938.

The bridge has a total length of 146 feet and a longest span of 128 feet with a deck width of 18 feet. The railings on the bridge don't match. The one on the east (upstream) side is solid concrete while the one on the west (downstream) side is a pierced style. That is the original arrangement intended to lessen flood waters on the bridge deck. The bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

At the west end of the bridge you see the Cundiff store.

Same building from other side. The buildings in the background include the original Indian Miller's zoo and others. The building on the far right was Rimmy Jim's store and gas station.

This is the the first of two zoos at Two Guns, Harry E. "Indian" Miller announced plans for it in mid-1924. In a newspaper article from the time the project was described as ...

"... Miller will establish a Gila monster farm and ... plans to operate an Indian snake dance every afternoon ... Mr. Miller's collection of Indian, animal, reptilian and other curios is extensive "

Miller was an Apache Indian who used the names Indian Miller and Chief Crazy Thunder. By the summer of 1925 he was routinely running newspaper ads offering to ... " ... buy baby mountain lions, foxes, bobcats, and antelopes" for his zoo. He kept the animals in stone walled cages right behind this building and on the very edge of the canyon.

As fond of these wild animals as Miller apparently was, the feeling wasn't always mutual, over the years he was attacked at different times by a Gila monster and a fox, both of which bit his face, and years later by a bobcat.

Miller leased the land for his business from the Cundiff family who owned the 320 acres that made up Canyon Lodge / Two Guns. Miller was responsible for the name Two Guns being applied to the town, the name came from one of his favorite movie stars. In 1926 Mr. Cundiff and Miller had some sort of dispute and Miller shot Cundiff dead, a rather primitive version of tenant / landlord dispute resolution, the court said it was self defense.

In 1931 Miller moved his operation to a spot at a large cave just east of the Arizona - New Mexico state line. After his death in 1952 that became the Chief Yellowhorse Trading Post. In 1926 he had also built a trading post, operated by his sister, that eventually came to be known as the Lion Farm in what is now the Painted Desert National Park. That was demolished years ago by the park, but we saw the ruins, a couple of chunks of foundation, in 2015 on a tour of the park by the Park Service.

Here is better look at what's left of Rimmy Jim's store and station. This was a two story building, the stone stairway is on the left in this photo. A large wooden section of the building has apparently rejoined the earth around it. I'm not sure if Rimmy Jim owned the the building or just leased it from Indian Miller.

----------
Vintage Advertising Highlights

Historical
Two Guns
Town
Historical Two Guns Town illustrating popular Canyon Diablo --- long time trading post, battle ground, and village of the Navajo and Apache Indians.
Stage Coach and guided tours available.

Two Gun Town - located 0n U.S. Hiway 66 - 30 miles west o Flagstaff, Arizona. Featuring complete facilities. PhoneTwo Gun Town, Arizona, Toll #91

----------

Photo(s): 2013, 2015