Lochiel, Arizona
| Lochiel, Arizona | |
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| Populated place | |
Road signs in Lochiel. Part of the town and the international border can be seen in the background.
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 Lochiel, Arizona
Lochiel, Arizona
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| Coordinates: 31°20′08″N 110°37′26″W / 31.33556°N 110.62389°WCoordinates: 31°20′08″N 110°37′26″W / 31.33556°N 110.62389°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Arizona |
| County | Santa Cruz |
| Elevation | 4,685 ft (1,428 m) |
| Time zone | Mountain (MST) (UTC-7) |
| FIPS code | 04-41750 |
| GNIS feature ID | 31163 |
Lochiel is a populated place and former border crossing in southern Santa Cruz County, Arizona, approximately 25 miles east of Nogales. The townsite is located in the southwestern part of the San Rafael Valley on Washington Gulch about 1.5 miles west of the Santa Cruz River. It was first settled in the late-1870s and mostly abandoned by 1986. The town served the ranches of the San Rafael Valley and the Washington Camp and Duquesne mining towns of the Patagonia Mountains about five miles to the northwest up Washington Gulch.
The present-day Lochiel was originally known by local Mexican settlers as La Noria, which is Spanish for a wheel-drawn well, and later as Luttrell, before being renamed "Lochiel" by the rancher Colin Cameron in 1884.
Lochiel is the main branch of Clan Cameron, some of the chiefs of which − such as Donald Cameron of Lochiel − figure prominently in Scottish history. "The Lands of Lochiel" were united into the Barony of Lochiel in the early sixteenth century. It was originally "bounded by [the lands of] Clanranald on the west, by the waters of Lochy and Lochiel on the south, and by [the lands of Clan] Mackintosh on the east and north." In 1633, an act of Scottish Parliament transferred certain Mackintosh lands to Lochiel, including Tor Castle.
The Lochiel area was originally inhabited by a small community of Mexican ranchers before a smelting works was erected in the late 1870s to serve the nearby mines in the Patagonia Mountains, bringing in American settlers. By 1881, a town by the name of Luttrell had formed and was home to some 400 people, most of whom worked in the smelter or in the mines, as well as five stores, three saloons, a brewery, a butcher shop, a bakery, livery stables, and a boarding house operated by a one Dr. Luttrell, for whom the town was originally named.
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Wikipedia