Rocks for Lunch, Anybody?

Campbellite, among them cuprite, chalcotrichite, limonite, manganese, turquoise and malachite-which means this rock gives up a surprise a slice. Polished, it can present a palette of the Christmas colors of greens and reds or an impressionistic tableau of white and yellows and blues touched with a coppery glint. Scarcity adds to the intrigue of campbellite, as does the way it arrived.

"We'd bring it home in our lunch buckets," Mason Coggin explained in an interview prior to his death in November 2000. Coggin started work in the mines of Bisbee at the entry level of mucker and worked his way and education to become an engineer and a recognized expert of Arizona rocks and minerals.

Coggin knew Bisbee as a place where minerals ruled. "A miner could trade a haircut for rocks," he recalled, "automobile work for rocks."

And they could collect the rocks, filling boxes if not garages with their specimens from the earth they worked. "That's what happened to a bunch of it," agreed Verlyn Mason. The campbellite that didn't make it into those collections went the way of all things not considered paydirt. The gray flannel-looking rock with the fire hidden inside was pulverized for its copper.

The mines of Bisbee closed in 1975. The pumps that formerly had kept underground water from flooding the tunnels were turned off. The home of campbellite now sits submerged under hundreds of feet of water. Whatever glows down there is probably going to stay down there. And while you do occasionally hear talk of somebody having buried 55 gallon drums of the stuff, the only reliable source ofcampbellite remains the old miners and their heirs.

"I usually buy what they have-everything," said Gloria Dahms of Gloria's Jewelry and Gemstones in Bisbee. Shopkeepers there get calls from around the world for campbellite. Buyers aren't only collecting the stone, they are wearing it. Campbellite jewelry can run from $75 for a silver-set pendant to thousands for a brilliant red slab in a bola tie. This rock has certainly come a long way from riding around amid the banana peels and empty thermoses of Bisbee's working men. But, is it really unique?

According to Ken Phillips, other similar specimens of this type of mineral grouping may be found in other places. Mason Coggin jumped at such claims. "I'd like to see it," he challenged. But Phillips pointed out a supporting factor for campbelliteone that matters in a collector's world. "The mine or the location means as much as the specimen that fluoresces," he said. And this one was born in the world-renowned mining center of Bisbee, in the deepest and richest shaft of them all.

Of course, one cannot ignore the element of larceny in the story of the rock that should not be. The miners may call the lunch bucket activity "high-grading," but both they and the company, Phelps Dodge, knew the real word for it.

A miner could get fired. On-the-job rockhunting meant a loss of a miner's time, a loss of profit. But conversations in Bisbee's stores and coffee shops also make it clear that supervisors could turn a blind eye, unless the miners' safety was being compromised.

A tour into the Copper Queen Mine will give you a taste of life in the mines. Of course, the experience has been toned down. You ride a kind of tram into the mountain, rather than descending 2,000 or 3,000 feet straight down in a cage. You don't have water up to your ankles, thousands of feet of rock over your head, temperatures higher than 100 degrees.

In the early days, miners handled dynamite while using a candle for light. They could only be as good, one has to imagine, and as safe, as the guy working next to them. A miner's lot has always been hard work down to the bone.

"That's what it was," said Juan Palomino, who leads tours of the Copper Queen. He mined 30 years in Bisbee, worked in the Campbell-to the bottom," he said. He and his fellow miners spent their lives bringing out the copper that made the wires of the world sing. Of those little lunch bucket rocks that also made it out, he mused, "We'd take a few pieces home and that's all."

Then the mines closed and somebody decided those little hunks are the real rocks to be valued, collected. Strange world, isn't it, Juan, both down below, where rocks can burn brighter than the hottest coals, and up on top, where collectors' eyes can outshine the sun? Al AUTHOR'S NOTE: The Bisbee Mining and Historical Museum contains photographs, displays and mineral collections, (520) 432-7071. Queen Mine Tours require reservations, (520) 432-2071. For information on the Bisbee Gem and Mineral Show and for general area information, call the Bisbee Chamber of Commerce, (520) 432-5421.

Text by DOUGLAS KREUTZ Photographs by JACK DYKINGA