Jerome An Interesting Pictorial by Joseph Miller

Jerome

Jerome is one of Arizona's largest copper mining camps. It hangs precariously on the side of Mingus Mountain in the Black Hills of Yavapai county, and because of its position and the way it is built, Jerome is one of the most interesting and unusual towns in our state.

Its frame houses are a jumble on stilts with a fifteen-hundred foot difference in elevation between the highest and the lowest perches. The town has some houses with basements reached by a climb of three flights of steps, others with roofs below the level of the streets on which they face, and yet others with garages on their roofs.

Many householders can lean out of their kitchen windows and scratch matches on the neighbor's chimney. It is truly a unique town of which only a small part is shown here. The vast copper mining regions of Jerome and the Phelps Dodge smelter at Clarkdale can be viewed in the distance.

Below Jerome is the valley of the Rio Verde. On clear days some of the color of the cliffs of Oak Creek canyon can be seen below and to the east.