Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Near West Willcox Willcox, AZ

Willcox is an incorporated city in northern Cochise County, Arizona, set in the Sulphur Springs Valley at an elevation of about 4,170 feet.

Willcox was founded in 1880 as "Maley," a whistlestop on the Southern Pacific Railroad roughly halfway between El Paso, Texas, and Phoenix, and it was renamed in 1889 in honor of a visit by General Orlando B. Willcox; the city incorporated in 1915.

The population of Willcox was 3,213 at the 2020 census, down 14.5 percent from 3,757 at the 2010 census.

There were 1,268 households in Willcox at the 2020 census, and 1,512 housing units, of which about 16 percent were vacant.

Five miles south of Willcox lies the Willcox Playa, a vast dry lakebed that is the remnant of Ice Age-era Lake Cochise.

Six of Arizona's ten largest mountain ranges stand within about 70 miles of Willcox, including the Pinaleño and Chiricahua mountains, and sandhill cranes, some migrating from as far as Siberia, winter in the surrounding valley.

In the early 20th century Willcox was a national leader in cattle production, and agriculture remains a pillar of its economy.

Willcox became Arizona's second federally designated wine-growing region (the Willcox AVA) in 2016, and the Willcox area grows about 74 percent of the wine grapes produced in Arizona, more than any other region in the state.

Willcox is the birthplace of Rex Allen, the singing cowboy known as "The Arizona Cowboy," and honors him with the Rex Allen Arizona Cowboy Museum and the annual Rex Allen Days festival, held since 1951.

The city's calendar also includes the Wings Over Willcox birding festival each January and spring and fall Willcox Wine Country festivals.