Bones of Copper

Copper runs through Arizona's history, mythol-ogy and geology, thanks to the world's greatest copper deposits. Even today they yield two-thirds of the nation's annual production. Copper helped settle Arizona and now generates $2.6 billion a year and employs about 5,900 workers. So the landscapes of Arizona are but skin draped over a skeleton of copper.

More than 55 million years before the first rock shop opened in Arizona, waves of magma rose through the Earth's crust toward the surface, vaporizing groundwater as it invaded the overlying rock. As it cooled, minerals and gems crystallized in the matrix of hot, wet rock. Turquoise, ajoite, devilline, apachite, boothite, dioptase, malachite and spangolite blossomed in the dark ground. More significant, the cooling mixture left behind gold, molybdenum, silver, lead and numerous major copper deposits.

The Sinagua Indians mined Mingus Mountain near Jerome more than a thousand years ago, leaving behind pigments of azurite and a few tools and weapons. Invading Spaniards poked around the Tuzigoot works in the late 1500s, but left in disgust when they found no gold. In 1854, The Arizona Mining and Trading Co., the area's first min-ing firm, started work on the silver and copper ore near Ajo. The venture failed for lack of water and transport, but was later followed by the United Verde Co. in Jerome, the Longfellow Copper Co. near Clifton and the Copper Queen Mine of Bisbee.

By 1864, miners and speculators made up one-quarter of the population of Arizona and half its Legislature. Welsh, Cornish, Bohemian, Moravian, Polish and Mexican Bisbee's Queen Mine tour gives visitors a whiff of the tough, dangerous life deep down in one of the richest copper mines in history, which operated from 1877 to 1975 before the rejuvenated mining town turned it into a tourist attraction. Visitors don slickers, helmets and headlamps to descend into the mines and hear one-time miners recount their experiences. RANDY PRENTICE

The bright colors of the 950-foot-deep open-pit Lavender Mine testify to the chemistry of deposits that have yielded great bounties of copper and turquoise. The extraction of low-grade copper ore started in the early 1950s, and in just 20 years, miners had turned a copper-rich hill into a 300-acre pit, complete with viewing platforms for awestruck tourists. RANDY PRENTICE

The view down into the largest open-pit mine in the country shimmers with irony and a fascinating history. The famous Apache war shaman Geronimo was born near here, somewhere in the wilderness headwaters of the Gila River. Soldiers chasing Apache war parties discovered the first traces of gold, silver and copper. Now the stunning mine dwarfs the gigantic three-story-tall trucks that can trundle up from the bottom with 260 tons of ore in a single load. Phelps Dodge and other mining companies have hauled 6.1 billion tons of ore from the pit, which remains an active mine. The historic mining town of Clifton has modest accommodations but a rich history, including its historic jail hewed out of solid rock by one Margarito Varela in 1881. Margarito got paid, got drunk and was the first occupant of his just-finished cell.

isolated towns and empty trails attracted notorious outlaws. Curly Bill, the Clanton family and Johnny Ringo rode roughshod over Cochise County in the early 1880s until the mine owners and burghers of Tombstone hired the Earp brothers. Butcher Knife Bill, Pony Deal, Pearl Hart the Lady Bandit, the Double Dobe Gang, Bluebeard and countless others roared across the country pursued by lawmen like Billy Breakenridge, Jeff Milton, Slim Gilmore, Bob Paul and the aptly named Texas John Slaughter. Meanwhile, Cochise, Geronimo and the Apache Kid slipped out of the mountains to raid the rancheros and settlements of Copper Country. Geronimo and his band attacked the Morenci smelter in 1883. Men like Indian agent John Clum tried to pacify them while scouts Al Sieber and Tom Horn stalked them. In 1870, Bob Metcalf discovered the rich ore of Chase Creek Canyon while hunting Apache raiders in southeastern Arizona. The country was too wild to mine at the time, and the law of claims was difficult and discouraging. Two years later, after the Mining Act of 1872 simplified filing claims and the Army attempted to subdue the Apaches, Metcalf and his brother Jim returned to the narrow canyon. The Metcalfs established the fabled Longfellow Mine and built "Cliff Town," later Clifton, in the shadow of the cliffs of Chase Creek Canyon. Clifton survived floods, outlaws and the Apaches before Phelps Dodge took over the Longfellow Mine around the turn of the last century. Phelps Dodge bought the Copper Queen Mine in 1881 and by 1905 it was one of the world's largest copper mines. In 1917, soaring copper prices and conflicts between the miners and the owners came to a violent pitch with the crusade by the radical Wobblies, or Industrial Workers of the World. The companies drummed up war hysteria against them. Greenway, Walter Douglas and others encouraged rumors that the often-immigrant Wobblies planned to deny the nation a vital resource by striking. In July, Cochise County Sheriff Harry C. Wheeler led armed vigilantes in a roundup of union sympathizers. More than 1,000 men were herded into filthy boxcars and

Clifton-Morenci

Mining for Tourists

Crowded onto the steep slopes of the Mule Mountains, Bisbee has completed its transformation from tough, brawling, historic mining town into a refuge for artists, tourists and odd characters. Once the largest city between New Orleans and San Francisco, thanks to 2.8 million ounces of gold and 8 billion pounds of copper, it's now full of galleries, cafes, shops and supposedly haunted hotels. RANDY PRENTICE

Bisbee

An exuberant jostling of historic, Victorian buildings leapfrog up the steep, narrow streets of this apparently unkillable mining town, now an artist-tourist-oddball haven. Hard-drinking prospector George Warren filed early claims on one of the world's richest copper deposits, but lost it all on a barroom bet that he could outrun a horse. A century of mining ended in 1974, after producing great wealth and controversy. At one point, Bisbee miners invaded Mexico to rescue American mine owners besieged by striking Mexican workers-which provided one of the sparks to ignite the Mexican Civil War. After the mines played out, Bisbee capitalized on its cool, 5,000-foot-plus elevations and reinvented itself as an artist colony and tourist mecca.

shipped to a point between Deming and Lordsburg where they were dumped unceremoniously. Most did not return to Bisbee, and those who did were soon summoned before kangaroo courts and driven from town again. The "Bisbee Deportation" in 1917 characterized a century of labor strife in the mines of Arizona. "As far as we're concerned, we're still on strike!" Fred Watson, one of the deportees, declared almost 60 years later. "I'll forget it when I die!"

History runs deep in Copper Country, even personal history. I grew up there. My family owned the newspapers in San Manuel and Kearny, and I can still remember driving into Clifton for the first time with Dad and Granddad. I was 7. We had come down the Coronado Trail, which in those days was a steep dirt road starting at Hannagan Meadow in the White Mountains. Our old DeSoto's brakes shuddered and burned as we slid down the last miles above Chase Creek Canyon, staggered by the stark contrast between the remote forest and the open-pit mine. By then the towns of Metcalf and old Morenci had already disappeared under tailings piled hundreds of feet high.

My dad knew the mine foreman, so he arranged for us to ride in a monstrous ore truck to the bottom of the pit. Standing next to it, I had to crane my neck to see the top of a tire, with the cab stratospherically far away. Even in those comparatively primitive days, the truck must have carried numerous tons of ore. Its body overhung the narrow road as we descended into the overwhelming void. I hung out the passengers' window to see into the pit while my dad held my belt to keep me from bouncing out of the rattling truck.

When the truck stopped to pick up its load, we walked the rest of the way down. The open pit loomed above us, 2 miles wide and 3 miles long. I scurried around the bottom looking for raw copper, but I couldn't find any remotely interesting rocks. They laughed when I asked: "Why is copper covered by such ugly rocks?"

My dad picked up some gravelly ore and held it out. "Son," he said, "these are not trinkets." He let the stones sift through his fingers. "These ugly stones are copper."

He thought about that for a minute, perhaps considering all the men who died to extract the ore from the earth. "They are our life," he added. "They are the bones of Arizona." AH ADDITIONAL READING: Newly revised, Arizona Ghost Towns and Mining Camps: A Travel Guide to History includes GPS waypoints. The softcover book ($14.95 plus shipping and handling) can be ordered online at arizonahighways.com or by calling toll-free (800) 543-5432.

Formerly known as the “Wickedest Town in the West,” Jerome now specializes in laid-back socializing in places like the Flatiron Cafe. The population peaked at 15,000 in the 1920s before Jerome became the “Largest Ghost Town in America.” Now it's a National Historic District that caters to a steady stream of tourists. KERRICK JAMES

Death by Chocolate

Perched on the hillside overlooking the Verde Valley, the delectable shops of Jerome don't seem in immediate danger of sliding on down the hill like the mining town-now-artist-colony's infamous traveling jail. GEORGE H.H. HUEY It's hard to believe that a town made famous by its mines and its runaway jail has become an artist colony and tourist gemstone. But Jerome's historic collection of buildings stairstepping 1,500 feet up a 30-degree slope has always been implausible. The mining town repeatedly prospered, burned, crashed and revived as miners extracted a billion dollars worth of gold, silver and copper from 80 miles of tunnels and pits. A whole section of the town slid down the hillside. The famous Traveling Jail has moved 220 feet. The population dwindled to fewer than 100 in the early 1950s when the mine closed, but rose again when artloving hippies repopulated it in the 1960s. Now 1.5 million people per year visit its quirky, historic assemblage of galleries, bed and breakfasts, curio shops and artist studios clinging to the hillside with sweeping views of Sedona and the Verde Valley.

Jerome

taking in the White Tanks

A centuries-old day trip sometimes reveals a desert waterfall