Bisbee, AZ

Our visit to Bisbee was enlightening. We learned a lot about its turbulent past.

Bisbee is a mining town that began after a soldier, who was on a march through the area that was aquired by the Gadsden Purchase, noticed the large amount of mineralization and put in a mining claim.

The mining of Copper and other minerals is a high capitalization effort and this brought in big money from back east to set up mining firms and mine it. Over 8 Billion pounds of copper have been mined here from the start to the present time. Phelps Dodge is the current company here but it is up for sale and will be under new owners soon.

One of the affects of this was the strife between the miners and the companies as the miners tried to organize to protect themselves from terrible working conditions down in the mines.
The history of the strife is interesting in that it is one of the foundations of later unionization of workers in other industries.

As Bisbee grew it went through several sites as it was consumed by fire several times and relocated to make way for mining. Eventually it rebuilt with brick and stone and was a very substantial city which competed with San Francisco and St Louis in many respects. It had Opera houses and was very modern. As this photo shows, it is built upon the hills which border the mines.







The building at the left is the US Post Office for Bisbee. Very ornate as are many of the other buildings in the city.










This is the famous Bisbee Grand Hotel which was known far and wide for its opulence.

Over time the population of the city dwindled as mechanization of the mines reduced the number of miners needed and later when the underground mining was dropped in favor of open pit mining which was much cheaper.







The city now has many arts and crafts shops for the tourists to purchase trinkets and fine art at.
It reminds us of Eureka Springs, Arkansas in many respects.

The elevation of the city makes for cooler temperatures in the summer than most of southern Arizona and is a mecca during the summer months.