Concho/St.Johns is one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in Arizona's White Mountains that doesn't sit on a reservation — a small high-desert town with a long memory. Here's how it came to be.
Long Before the Town
People lived in this part of eastern Arizona for many centuries before anyone called it Concho/St.Johns. The Mogollon culture built pueblos and stone villages across the region roughly between 700 and 1300 CE, and traces of their masonry and pottery can still be found in the surrounding country.
Sometime between the 1100s and the 1400s, Athabaskan-speaking peoples — the ancestors of today's Apache and Navajo — moved into the area. The land around Concho/St.Johns stayed firmly under Apache control for centuries, right up until the close of the Apache Wars in the late 1800s.
The First Settler
The man usually credited as Concho/St.Johns's first permanent non-Native settler has one of the more remarkable backstories in the region. Don Manuel Antonio Candelaria, originally from Cubero in New Mexico, first came to the area in the 1840s as a child — taken captive by the Apache. He was adopted into the tribe and lived among the Apache as a full member for years.
As a young man he chose to return to Cubero to reconnect with his birth family, re-learned Spanish, and married Regina Baca. Then, around 1861, he came back to the land he'd known as a boy — this time with his family and some 700 head of sheep and goats — to settle it for good.
"Las Conchas" — The Shells
The name has a quiet poetry to it. Early settlers noticed an abundance of small shells along Concho/St.Johns Creek, which in those days ran year-round. They called their settlements "Las Conchas" — "The Shells" — from the Spanish word concha, meaning shell. You'll sometimes hear that the name comes from a Basque word for a small valley, but there's no solid evidence for that; the shell story is the one that holds up.
A Growing Hispanic Community
Candelaria wasn't alone for long. Through the 1860s and 1870s, more Hispanic New Mexican families put down roots in Concho/St.Johns — names like Archunde, Atencio, Baca, Chavez, Gallegos, Padilla and Romero, families whose descendants still shape the community today. A post office opened in 1881, and a school system took hold in the early 1880s, a sign that the settlers intended to stay and build something lasting.
The Mormon Arrival
By the early 1900s, Mormon settlers had also made their way to Concho/St.Johns. Rather than displacing the established Hispanic community, the two groups largely blended, creating the diverse small-town character the area is still known for — a mix of cultures sharing the same hard, beautiful stretch of high desert.
Adobe That Still Stands
Walk through Concho/St.Johns and you're walking through its history. The town is dotted with adobe buildings dating to the late 19th century, some remarkably well preserved, including the old Concho/St.Johns church that still stands. These aren't ruins behind a fence — they're part of a living community, which is exactly what makes Concho/St.Johns special. It's history you can still live in.
The Quiet Century — and a Little Growth
For a long time Concho/St.Johns stayed small and sparsely settled, a ranching and farming community far from the bustle. Things picked up a bit in the 1970s as land was subdivided and new residents trickled in, but the town never lost its rural soul. Today it remains a close-knit high-desert community of a few hundred people, with its own elementary school and public library.
Concho/St.Johns Today
The same spirit that built Concho/St.Johns — neighbors helping neighbors, making do, looking out for one another across a lot of open country — is exactly what Concho/St.Johns Dash is built on. We're a co-op of food, goods and services run by Concho/St.Johns residents, for Concho/St.Johns residents. Different century, same town, same idea.
Concho/St.Johns Dash serves Concho/St.Johns, Arizona — proud to be part of a story more than 160 years in the making. ConchoDash.com or 480-201-7275.
Sources: historical accounts of Concho/St.Johns and Apache County, Arizona, including community histories and public encyclopedia entries. Dates and details about early settlement are drawn from the historical record and, where uncertain, are noted as such.
← Back to Concho/St.Johns Dash