This is a Fine Art photograph of the 'El Cochise Motel' sign. The El Cochise Motel still sits in Benson Arizona. However it is no longer in business, but stands as a reminder of the many Mom and Pop motels of the 1950s and 1960s. Benson is a quiet town with a population of 4,958 inhabitants. It was founded in 1880 as an over night stop for the Butterfield Overland Stage mail delivery route. Soon the use of horse drawn locomotion was replaced by the Southern Pacific Railroad, still keeping Benson on the stop list. In 1997 the Union Pacific Railroad purchased the line and continues to service Benson today. Tourists come to see the magnificent Kartchner Caverns which are still a living and growing organism. The caverens are located in the foothills of the Whetstone Mountain range. Benson is in Cochise County which named after the famous Apache leader, Cochise, who happened to be the brother-in-law to Geronimo, another amazing Apache warrior. Their united goal was to keep the white man out of their sacred territory so people would not open the likes of the 'Cochise Motel' or the 'Geronimo Springs Cabins and Motel' in New Mexico, but it was all to no avail. After years of vicious fighting between the Chiricahuas Apaches and Mexicans during the early 1800s, the United states stepped in and settled the matter by claiming Mexican and Apache lands in the 1850s. There was for a brief time a tenuous peace, but that ended when a band of Apaches drove away a local cattle rancher and kidnapped his twelve year old son. Naturally, Cochise was blamed for this heinous act, which turns out to be a tribe of Coyotero Apaches, not Chiricahuas that perpetuated the attack. There was an American Lt Bascom who further enraged Cochise by arresting him for the crime. Cochise escaped by cutting his way out of the tent. Soon Lt Bascom was on an eleven year hunt for Cochise, who had slipped off to Mexico, reappearing from time to time to kill American settlers and travelers. Cochise took up encampment in the Dragoon Mountains and from their he ran the headquarters for his on going attacks. Cochise had made many arrangements, treaties and agreements with the US, but each time Cochise found that he had been lied to. One of the most honest depictions of his life was the movie called "BROKEN ARROW" which showed the Native American's side of this bloody story. Cochise, as many heroic Native Americans, became old and tired of the fighting the military with its new hard hitting weapons, like the caisson-mounted Howitzer, surrendered in defeat. Cochise and his Apache tribe were relocated to a reservation and there, in land not native to him, he died on June 8, 1874 of stomach cancer.