Mayer, AZ

Mayer is a Yavapai County community built around a stage stop, a railroad, and a lot of red brick. Joe Mayer began the town near the Big Bug Stage Station in the 1880s, then helped bring the Prescott and Eastern Railroad through in 1898. His brickyard supplied the 1902 Mayer Business Block, while the Red Brick Schoolhouse and other early buildings still give Main Street a strong historic outline. The 129-foot Mayer smokestack recalls the short-lived mining and smelting era west of town. Mayer Unified School District keeps its elementary campus in the community, with the high school in Spring Valley. Mayer is a high-desert crossroads whose old commercial buildings still tell the railroad story.