# Adamsville, Arizona

Adamsville was a populated place in Pinal County, Arizona. Once a thriving farm town, it became a ghost town by the 1920s. Adamsville is located at an elevation is 1,450 feet (442 m), on the south bank of the Gila River, west of Florence, Arizona.

## History

Adamsville was one of the first two towns formed in Pinal County, Arizona. It was named for its original settler in 1866, Fred A. Adams. When a post office was established there in 1871, it was named Sanford (for a Captain George B. Sanford of the First U.S. Cavalry), by a political enemy of Mr. Adams, Richard McCormick. The town had stores, homes, a post office and a flour mill and water tanks. Local residents continued to use the original name, causing confusion which existed until 1876, when the post office was discontinued. In 1900, the Gila River overflowed and wiped out most of the town. Those who survived the flood moved to the town of Florence. The inscription on the marker reads as follows: "In the 1870s, a flour mill and a few stores formed the hub of life in Adamsville, where shootings and knifings were commonplace, and life was one of the cheapest commodities. Most of the adobe houses have been washed away by the flooding Gila River". Listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, reference #10000114. The entire settlement was gone by 1920. Adams died in 1910 and is buried in the Adamsville A.O.U.W. (Ancient Order of United Workmen) Cemetery.

## Demographics

Adamsville first appeared on the 1870 U.S. Census as an unincorporated village. It was then located within Pima County. It became a part of Pinal County with its creation in 1875. It reported 400 residents in 1870, all White. It was tied with the village of Apache Pass as the then-second most populous locale in Pima County, behind Tucson, and was the fourth largest recorded community in the entire territory of Arizona. In 1880, it reported as the village of Sanford, with just 39 residents. It was the second-least recorded populated community, tied with the village of Plomosa, and just ahead of Casa Grande. It did not report again on the census.

## Remaining structures

* Adamsville Water Tower
* Adamsville store
* Adamsville Water Tanks
* Adamsville grain storage
* Windmill Farmhouse

## Cemetery

Historic Adamsville A.O.U.W. Cemetery – The Pioneers' Cemetery Association (PCA) maintains the "historic cemetery" (one which has been in existence for more than fifty years) in Adamsville. Among those interred in the cemetery are:
* Fred A. Adams – Founder of Adamsville.
* Judge Hiram Bell Summers – Summers was the first Judge appointed in Pinal County. Local lore was that Judge Summers was the first Judge to sentence a man to hang in Pinal County for a crime and that the man was so outraged at the Judge's decision that he jumped up from his table and pulled a gun out of his coat and tried to shoot the Judge, fortunately he missed and was later hanged. After this the local residents knew if Judge Bell was going to pass a death sentence on to a defendant because he would lay his own revolver on the bench prior to pronouncing the sentence.
* Capt. Granville Henderson Oury – Judge: District court of New Mexico. Delegate to Confederate Congress. Arizona Mounted Volunteers CSA, Territorial legislator to U. S Congress, Pioneer-Soldier-Statesman.
* Felix Grunde and his wife Martha Angeline Hardwick – Family known as the Hardwick pioneers
* The Stevens family – Olnorah Stevens, wife of Daniel C. Stevens; Carmen Sarah Stevens, daughter of Daniel C. & Ollie N. Stevens and Taylor Stevens, infant son of Daniel C. and Mary E. Stevens
* Adamsville A.O.U.W. Cemetery
* Grave of Fred A. Adams (1844–1910)