Pirtle
Cities and Towns
Pirtleville, Arizona 85626
Pirtleville was founded by Elmo R. Pirtle in late1800's. The town is located on the N.W. of Douglas, Arizona in Cochise county. There was an old flour mill located there in 1970, when I visited Pirtleville, and I believe the town was originally built around this mill. The city of Douglas is on the border of Arizona and Mexico in the S. E. corner of Arizona. The Pirtleville addition to the Douglas map was filed with the Cochise county clerks office on 17 Jun 1903 by E. R. Pirtle and Co. According to the 1990 U.S. census Pirtleville has a population of 1364 consisting of 452 families. The cemetery headstones in 1970 were all in Spanish. There is only one Pirtle is buried there, and that is in the Douglas cemetery. The sextant book reads John B. Pirtle, buried 2-10-23. His headstone reads Sergt. John T. Pirtle, Co. K., 29 Mo. Inf. This Pirtleville link is on Yahoo's search engine.
4 Nov 1998 - Below is an email I received from David Pinedo, who is a native of Pirtleville. He corrected my error about the circumstances surrounding the founding of Pirtleville. Many thanks David for this information as it greatly enhances the historical knowledge of Pirtleville.
I just visited your Pirtle cities and towns Web page.
As a native of Pirtleville, Arizona, I found one glaring error -- you mention that the
town was built around a flour mill.
A little history, from my distant memory of conversations with my parents, aunts, uncles,
and grandparents...
At the turn of the century, the copper mines in Bisbee (20 miles west of
Douglas/Pirtleville) were booming. The copper ore needed to be refined, and there existed
a copper smelter in Bisbee. My father told me that the smoke from the smelter was pretty
bad in the canyons of Bisbee, so when Phelps-Dodge was looking for a location for a new
smelter, the Sulphur Springs Valley east of Bisbee was a natural location. It was in a
wide open valley, there was water available, and most importantly, it was downhill from
the mines in Bisbee.
Douglas came to life with the opening of the Phelps-Dodge smelter. Of course, lots of
manual labor was required to operate the smelter, and many immigrants from Mexico found
work there. Segregation was the norm in those days, so Pirtleville was established as the
housing area for the Mexican immigrants. Elmo Pirtle was the "developer" for the
Pirtleville division. It is interesting to note that the majority of the early settlers of
Pirtleville tended to all come from the same area of Mexico -- the area around the city of
Zacatecas, also a copper mining area.
In the mid-1970's, Phelps-Dodge closed down the Douglas smelter, eliminating many
semi-skilled, well-paying jobs, resulting in difficult economic times for the area, that
in my opinion, continue to this day.
David Pinedo
The following are listed as towns but have
no zip codes with the U.S. Post Office.
They are apparently abandoned and no longer exist.
| Pirtle, Oklahoma County: Byran Lat.: 33 59' 20" N Long.: 96 16' 03" W |
| Pirtle, Oregon County: Linn Lat.: 44 35' 58" N Long.: 123 08' 11" W |
| Pirtle, Texas County: Rusk Lat.: 32 18' 17" N Long.: 94 51' 19" W |
Cities and Towns with a variation of the Pirtle name
Birtle is situated on highway 83, which is one the provincial north-south arteries, providing a major link between Northern Manitoba Parklands and the United States. Birtle is 322 km west of Winnipeg and 150 km northwest of Brandon near the Saskatchewan border
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