In 1882 the New Mexico and Arizona Railroad built a rail line from Benson to Nogales, Arizona. This line connected the Southern Pacific Railroad at Benson with Fairbanks, Fort Huachuca, Elgin, Sonoita, and Nogales. In Nogales it was possible, once the border had been crossed, to continue by rail to Guaymas, Sonora, on the Gulf of California, In 1893, Civil War veteran R.R. Richardson developed a part of his ranch where the railroad crosses the Sonoita Creek into a town, which was eventually named Patagonia, after the Mountain Range. In 1900 the NM&AR built the Railroad Depot in Patagonia which serves now as the Municipal Court. In 1929 a catastrophic flood destroyed an extensive part of the railroad between Patagonia and Nogales and the NM&AR built a turntable in Patagonia and decided to make it the new terminal. The railroad transported mostly silver ore, mined in the surrounding area of Patagonia and cattle. In the 1930s only the segment between Fairbanks and Patagonia remained in service. The branch was abandoned around 1960 when ASARCO Mining closed it Flux Mine. Today Patagonia, located at an elevation of 4055-ft between the Santa Rita Mountains (9,453-ft) to the north and the Patagonia Mountains, over 7600-ft to the south, still has ranchers and some miners, but artists and winter visitors make up a good portion of the population of about 900 inhabitants. This picture was taken on 12 November 2017, Sig...