If you have a GPS unit in your car, you may have noticed something unusual as you drive around Tucson. You may see an indication of a town or community on the GPS that is located right in the middle of modern-day Tucson. It turns out that they are communities that disappeared long ago, but they still show up on old maps.

For example, when Tucsonans hear the word Wilmot they think of the main street running north and south, but a GPS or Mapquest search shows that Wilmot is more than just a road. “Mapquest doesn’t create their own electronic maps, they probably go to what’s existing already, which would be the United States Geological Survey, or to ADOT,” says Jim Turner of the Arizona Historical Society.

That explains why someone driving down Kolb Road would see a small blip on their screen past Centennial Drive called “Wilmot.” The name dates back to Tucson’s days as an old railroad town. “When they were building that stretch from Benson to Tucson, they had tool sheds every 10 or 20 miles, and supplies so that they could build the railroad,” says Turner.

Each tool shed had a telegraph key, so workers could send requests to the next one. They named the one off of Kolb after David Wilmot Wickersham, but the word Wickersham was too long to type out on a key all the time, so they went with Wilmot.

Another stop on the path of historic Tucson is at the base of the Rincon Mountains – the old community of Tanque Verde. “I think their name originated from the great variety of artesian springs that pop up throughout the desert,” says Bob Cote of the Tanque Verde Guest Ranch. They were springs filled with green algae, hence the name Tanque Verde which is Spanish for green tanks.

No signs of an old town can be found at the spot named “Tanque Verde” on a Mapquest map. Two large ponds exist across the street that could have represented the green tanks, but it turns out that those bodies of water on a golf course are man-made.

Fox 11 News has found about a dozen lost communities on modern day maps in and around Tucson, including a religious settlement which survived into the 1960’s, although all that’s left now is a church. We’ll have that story coming up later.