Brief Kingman History

Anyone who meets me will find that I am a huge history buff and nothing excites me more than working and living in the historical Dowtown Kingman area and selling homes in this area. My fiance and I live in a home that was built in 1928 and is completely made of stone. It is a home that I walked by going to school every morning and as a kid never dreamed I would live in such a magnificent historical and architectual stunning masterpiece.

Downtown Kingman is located in a natural basin, surrounded by basaltic hills, and was not established as a mining camp, but was a railroad hub. In 1880 Lewis Kingman surveyed along the Atlantic and Pacific right of way between Needles and Albuquerque. By 1883 the track was completed. The first reference of Kingman itself was from the newspaper the Alta Arizona, a newspaper published in Mineral Park near modern day Chloride. It issue of June 10, 1882 states, "There is a new town on the tapis at or near Beale Springs." In 1882, the Alta Arizona refers to the sampling works at Kingman, also saying that Middleton is to be hereafter named Kingman, where in November of 1882 a rooming house, store and other buildings were going up.

By 1888 most of the original townsite lots had been sold. On the north side of the Santa Fe line, the business district grew and prospered and on the south side homes dominated the landscape. Today when we do title searches on property we can go all the way back to the railroad usually owning the land and before that the US and finally all the way back to Spain owning the land here.