Welcome to Clifton and Morenci

BY: Maggie Wilson

Clifton and Morenci

Despite hard times, the welcome mat is out at Clifton and Morenci Buff clouds, like white whales floundering on a sea of chalk blue, hang low over the cliffs in the middle distance and cast their shadows on the backdrop of glowing high-rise hills. But the eye is drawn by the town itself: Cliff Town, the miners of the 1870s called it; Clifton is its name today.

"An Arizona Brigadoon," said one writ er; and certainly at first sight Clifton does seem somehow ethereal, a place out of sync with time. This feeling of having stepped into history's own time warp doesn't begin to ease until the visitor has a closer look. Even then its hold remains surprisingly firm.

A stone's throw from the approach on U.S. Route 666 lies Chase Creek Road, once the town's business district. Now it is an assemblage of some of the best old mining town architecture in Arizona. Most of the 48 buildings hugging the high curbed narrow street are boarded up. Faded signs on facades show layers of over-paintings. This one was a saloon in its heyday, then a mercantile store, an English chop house, a Chinese restaurant. Another was a bordello in one of its firstincarnations. Now the tatters of a lace curtain fluttering in the breeze send ghostly signals to passersby from a broken second-story window.

Cracks in the padlocked doors of warped, shrunken wood yield glimpses of past grandeur: a dismantled mahogany bar; ceilings of pressed tin; etched, leaded, and beveled glass window panes; ornate brass door handles; hardwood flooring, bleached with neglect.

Along Clifton's main street, Chase Creek Road, reminders of the past (LEFT) recall better days. (RIGHT) "Chase Creek, Textures of Time," oil, 19 by 13 inches. The buildings are empty now, save for the pigeons that have inherited them. A telephone pole burdened with wires recalls the active life this now-quiet street once enjoyed. (BELOW) "Man of Many Memories," oil, 20 by 16 inches. Eighty-six-year-old Al Fernandez, who spent almost his entire life in Clifton, carries the history of his town's past in vivid memories of yesteryear, when copper was king and the community thrived.

Farther along is a building of locally quarried limestone. Garlands and Grecian urns decorate the facade of another. Here and there, wrought-iron balconies overhang the empty street.

Al Fernandez knew Chase Creek Road "back when." He arrived in 1911, later served as town councilman and mayor, and was a grocer on the street until he retired in 1975. His memory of past times is still strong: "Six big saloons, open day and night with doors wide open and each nickelodeon playing a different tune, made for a noisy street.... An attorney had an office in this building during Prohibition, and the freight office sent him a message: 'Get right over here and pick up your order of law books-they're leaking'.... I saw the owner of the livery stable shoot himself to death on these stairs, despondent because the city fathers said he'd have to move to the outskirts of town, that his horses were drawing too many flies.... Oh, sure, bordellos...those ladies weren't in a nice line of work, but they themselves were nice ladies...good citizens, even...."

Fernandez also remembers the Chinese laundryman who spoke no English or Spanish but always managed to return the right bundles of clothing to their owners. "He made his own marks in Chinese characters-things like 'wart on eye' or 'big pistol."

Then there's the two-story Chase Creek building he bought during the Depression for $200-and later sold for $15,000 when the cycle of bust turned to boom again.

Earlier, he remembers carrying bricks for the construction of a theater. "Earned 50 cents a day," he says, "and no rest breaks." The theater was built as a replica of Spain's Alhambra. In time, the Alhambra became the Lyric, then the Cosmopol itan Lyceum, "then the roof fell in." But the old Alhambra's arches still stand, open to a view of cliff and sky.

"What happened to Chase Creek? Fires. Floods. Prohibition. The Great Depression. The price of copper. Miners' strikes. And having no place big enough or flat enough for tourists to park their Winnebagos. That's what happened to Chase Creek. That's what happened to Clifton and Morenci."

In 1982, when a long, bitter labor dispute began in Morenci, it was to become America's most emotional and contentious strike in 50 years; and it took its toll on the populations of both towns, as many -including some whose families had been residents for five generationsmoved on to greener pastures.

Then, in 1983, another calamity befell Clifton: a devastating flood that destroyed or damaged 300 buildings, many of them antique treasures. Two-thirds of the town's businesses closed for good. And more people moved out.

One of those buildings washed away was the Greenlee County Historical Museumseum. Lost were the museum's archival material, historical collections, and memorabilia.

But a new museum is already open, an achievement that says much about the fierce tenacity of the remaining 4,000 townspeople. Its collections may be skimpy, but the building itself is freshly painted and repaired. That it is yet another Chase Creek reincarnation goes unnoted until you see the lettering atop the building declaring it to be the F.O.E. Hall, Aerie No. 1680.

Aspiring storm (LEFT) throbs with thunder over The Pit. The seven-mile-long open pit mining operation north of Morenci, on U.S. 666, is often described as a man-made Grand Canyon. (RIGHT) "Copper Colorscapes," oil, 16 by 24 inches. Where once old Morenci stood now gapes a section of Phelps Dodge Corporation's huge open pit mine. (BELOW) Eric Reynolds repairs a bulldozer blade. Fewer than half of the Phelps Dodge workers remain on the payroll after falling copper prices forced the company to close its smelter.

Helping sustain the town's persever-ance is a hope cherished by the diehards who cling to their homes among the cliffs and canyons. It is that Clifton will be saved by tourism, as other Arizona mining camps-notably Bisbee and Jeromehave been. Certainly the town has the needed in-gredients: nostalgic structures of the 1870s through the early 1900s; helpful, hospi table people; an abundance of camping hunting-fishing sites in nearby hills and mountains. There's even a grand plan for a long riverfront park along the course of the San Francisco River. And a mineral hot springs bathhouse, a 1918 attraction, might reopen. Yes, revival could be right around the corner, but if innovative developers and investment money don't arrive soon, Clif-ton and its historic buildings might deteri-orate beyond repair. Mayor Theresa Benavidaz has her own plan. "We need to build a levy to prevent yet another flood; we need to relocate people living in the 100-year flood plain; we need historic preservation projects; and we need a technology center to bring our children into the 21st century. Smelt-ing copper-as their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers did-is no longer a viable way of life here." As things now stand, Clifton has one not-very-new motel; restaurants range from fast-food eateries to one on Chase Creek that, as in days of yore, is open 24 hours a day and touts the best pies in the territory. Clifton's substitutes for recreational-vehicle parks are the U.S. Forest Service campgrounds along Route 666, the Coronado Trail. As you might expect, the cherished hope for tourist dollars also is reflected in the enthusiasm of the volunteers at Green-lee County Chamber of Commerce, who boast of "best fishing," including trout, bass, crappie, and catfish; "best hunting" for bear, mule and white-tail deer, turkey, dove, javelina, elk, quail ("Why, folks come all the way from California to hunt here"); "best rockhounding," with deposits of malachite, azurite, chrysocolla, agate, jas-per, rhyolite, chalcedony; and the "best canoeing" on the San Francisco River"but bring your own canoe; we don't have rentals." Still, those attractions all take a back-seat to "The Pit" and the Coronado Trail. The Pit is the Phelps Dodge Corpora-tion's open-pit mining operation, north of Morenci on the Coronado Trail. And an awesome sight it is, a man-made minia-ture Grand Canyon, terraced, benched, staircased, and glowing with vibrant col-ors: blue, iron oxide reds, buff, rose petal pinks, egg yolk yellows, gray, hot orange, near-chocolate purples. And deep. From the viewpoint on the rim, the 22-cubic-yard shovels and the 170-ton trucks look like Tonka toys. And long. It seems much longer than its touted seven miles. And Phelps Dodge officials say they'll be min-ing it deeper, wider, and longer "well into the next century."

M. P. Scanlon, who grew up in Morenci, is now vice president of Phelps Dodge in Phoenix. He thinks of The Pit as do most miners who know virgin lodes from common ores: "If God had made it with a meteor, it would be called a lovely natural wonder; since we've made it, some say, "That's obscene; cover it up."

The town where Scanlon lived as a child-"old" Morenci-is no more. It and the mining camp of Metcalf both stood on high hills above what is now The Pit; both were sacrificed to the demand for more and more raw copper. In appearance, that makes "new" Morenci and Clifton as different as day and night.

Morenci was named for the Michigan hometown of an early-day mining magnate. Its new version was built from scratch in the mid-1960s. A company-owned town, it is a model of cleanliness and orderliness.

Sorry, there are no ancient brick chimneys rising beside the sidewalk from the roof of a house on the street below, as there are in Clifton. No architectural wonders, no boarded up saloons, no vestige of what once was. There are red brick and tile houses, a shopping mall of white stucco, a grocery-department store owned and operated by Phelps Dodge, and smaller shops leased from the company by other merchants.

But the astute visitor will notice among the neat rows and clusters of houses that there are a number of empty ones, homes of former Phelps Dodge employees who left town during the strike that began in 1982 and culminated in 1986, when the mine union was decertified.

Struggling to remain competitive while battling depressed copper prices, Phelps Dodge closed its smelter and laid off half the mine's 3,000 workers. The copper concentrate produced from processing nearly 110,000 tons of ore per day is now shipped out of state for smelting, and the company recently began operating an innovative extraction plant that recovers a significant amount of additional copper from the huge piles of waste rock that surround the mine.

Earlier this year, an "outsider" could rent a three-bedroom house in Morenci for $125 a month; this fall, if plans are carried through, some houses will go up for sale as part of a venture involving Phelps Dodge and developer Estes Homes. If that does happen, it would be the first time houses and the ground they stand on could be owned by individuals in such a company town. It's hoped new residents with outside money will mean better times for both Morenci and Clifton merchants.

Spanking new as it is, Morenci doesn't offer much physical sense of history. But the spirit of old Morenci is strong, and Replacing the old town which was sacrificed to The Pit some years ago, Morenci, a quintessential company town born in the mid-1960s, is a model of orderliness and cleanliness. Three-bedroom houses bere rent for $125 per month, and later this month, for the first time, "outsiders" may be allowed to buy into the community.