2018 Trip 4: Arizona: May 20

Sierra Vista, Arizona Sunday May 20

Entering into the Queen Mine Tour

Sunday, normal weather for Arizona. Sunny and warm. Only question seems to be if the day will be windy. The forecast says sunny with highs in the 80s and 90s for the rest of week for southern Arizona. We checked out of the Holiday Inn Express in Willcox; on the positive side the rooms were fine, the milk at breakfast was cold and they had great, warm cinnamon buns. On the negative side, our room was overlooked for cleaning Saturday and the hot food at breakfast was bland.

The next two nights we will be staying in Sierra Vista, AZ. From Willcox, we drove west on I-10, stopping again at the Texas Canyon rest stop for pictures from the other side of the road. We went to church in Sierra Vista and then drove to Tombstone. Most Americans think of Tombstone and connect it with the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Tidbit: O.K.stood for Old Kindersley. Kindersley was the previous owner and people referred to the corral as Old Kindersley’s corral eventually shortening it to O.K.

I am not going to make a drawn out discussion of the gunfight, suffice it to say that it put Tombstone on the map and later movies and books have made it a permanent fixture in American lore. We went to Tombstone more to understand the history of the old West and this town. Like many places in Arizona, mining played a boom and bust cycle here. The old courthouse in Tombstone is now a state historic park and has displays of that early time. It was our first stop.

Historic Tombstone Courthouse State Park

Tombstone is named due to its first successful prospector who was told he would not find rocks with minerals in the area, only his own tombstone since the Apache Indians were still fighting the U.S. Army. In 1877 he discovered silver and gold ores and named his claim Tombstone and the city was founded in 1879 with that name. By 1882 the town had between ten and fifteen thousand residents. In 1883 and 1884, silver production boomed and the price declined. Combined with operational difficulties at the mines with too much water seeping into the underground mines despite huge pumps, the mines went bust.

A few years later the price was back up and silver mining increased. Then the Panic of 1893 caused another bust. One more boom period occurred before the silver mining closed completely due to the water issues and the low price of silver. Silver mining does not occur in Tombstone any more. The population decreased, the county government was moved to another town, and Tombstone sank towards oblivion. Movies and TV kept the Tombstone name alive and today Tombstone is primarily a tourist city with a population of 1,300.

Downtown Tombstone

Since we were in Tombstone, we did shell out to watch a documentary and visit the site of the O.K. Corral Gunfight. There are frequent re-creations and characters dressed in period costume roam the streets. Stage coach rides, walking tours, T-shirts, trinkets, etc. are omnipresent. Lunch was at a small family restaurant where we had some good burgers.

After Tombstone, we continued the history tour by driving to Bisbee, a former mining town. Bisbee began as a copper, gold, and silver mining town in 1880. Its production of these minerals was vast but not without hassle. Around the First World War, the Phelps-Dodge company and the local government twice deported hundreds of miners who were viewed as a threat to start mining unions in the area. Mining and the town’s population went through boom and bust cycles. Open pit mining began during WWI, underground mining continued also. By the 1970s, the higher grade ores had been mined and all mining ceased until a few years ago when it resumed on a small-scale basis.

The Lavender Pit-named for the man who began open pit mining in Bisbee

The Queen Mine Tour takes one underground to view the mining tunnels of a mine closed since the mid-1970s. The tour was part of an effort to help the economy stabilize after mining ceased. Today the tour and a cutesy, art scene keeps Bisbee alive although it does still lose population at each census. The town looks like a mine town. While environmental efforts are at work to reclaim mined out areas, there is a hundred year history of mining to overcome. The Lavender Pit is a huge hole in the ground and it with surrounding scalloped mountainsides are the major impression one has when leaving Bisbee.

The mine tour was worthwhile, though. It lasts 75 minutes. You ride on an authentic mine car into the mine on a horizontal tunnel. For this tour, besides a hard hat and vest, you have a light to get to play along the sides and roof of the mineshaft. The tour guide covers the mining process from its earliest days until the 1970s. There are over 1200 miles of tunnels carved into mountainsides of Bisbee. Through a period of consolidation, Phelps Dodge acquired ownership of the vast majority. In 2007, Phelps Dodge was bought out by Freeport-McMoRan, a vast mineral mining and development company, located in Phoenix.

We drove back to Sierra Vista and checked in at the Hampton Inn. Dinner was at Outback where our waitress had recently moved to Sierra Vista from Hastings MN to be near her aging mother. We shared numerous stories and left stuffed.

Ed and Chris. Sierra Vista May 21.