[2] Cochise County includes the Sierra Vista-Douglas, Arizona Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Captured by Native Americans, they spent eight years finding their way back to Mexico City, via the San Pedro Valley.

The Expedition of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1539 using it[clarification needed] as his route north through what they called the Guachuca Mountains of Pima[4] (Tohono O'odham) lands and later part of the mission routes north, but was actually occupied by the Sobaipuri descendants of the Hohokam.

They found a large Pueblo (described as a small city) between modern Benson and Whetstone, and several smaller satellite villages and smaller pueblos including ones on Fort Huachuca, Huachuca City and North Eastern Fry.

About 1657 Father Kino visited the Sobaipuris[5] just before the Apache forced most from the valley, as they were struggling to survive due to increasing Chiricahua Apache attacks as they moved into the area of Texas Canyon of the Dragoon Mountains.

In 1775, Presidio Santa Cruz de Terrenate[6] was founded on the west bank of the San Pedro River to protect the natives as well as the Spanish settlers who supplied the mission stations.

The presidio was chronically short on provisions due to raids, however, and lacked personnel to adequately patrol the eastern route due to wars with France and England, so the main route north shifted west to the Santa Cruz valley, farther from the range of the Chiricahua Apache who almost exclusively controlled the area by 1821.

The Jimmy Stewart movie Broken Arrow and subsequent television show of the same name starring John Lupton, which also aired from 1956 to 1958, were set in Cochise County but filmed at other locations.

Beginning in the late 1950s, the small community of Miracle Valley was the site of a series of bible colleges and similar religious organizations, founded by television evangelist A.

In 1982, Miracle Valley and neighboring Palominas were the site of a series of escalating conflicts between a newly arrived black religious community and the county sheriff and deputies that culminated in the Miracle Valley shootout.

[11] Cochise County is close to the size of the states of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined.

[22] Cochise County leans strongly towards the Republican Party in presidential elections.

Although the county includes the relatively liberal town of Bisbee, as well as the city of Douglas which has a large Latino population, this is outweighed by the heavily Republican tilt of the more populous Sierra Vista, which is adjacent to Fort Huachuca and thus has a heavy military presence.

In the Arizona Legislature, the county is part of the 19th district and is represented by Republican David Gowan in the State Senate and Republicans Gail Griffin and Lupe Diaz in the State House of Representatives.

Bisbee Municipal Airport is owned by the City of Bisbee and located five nautical miles (9 km) southeast of its central business district[26] Sierra Vista Municipal Airport (IATA: FHU, ICAO: KFHU, FAA LID: FHU), a joint-use civil-military airport which shares facilities with Libby Army Airfield, is located on the U.S. Army installation Fort Huachuca in the city of Sierra Vista.