Rediscover Ajo

BY: TOM DOLLAR

A plucky old mining town finds new hope as a mecca for tourists and retirees

There were three small hills near a place called Moivavi, many wells. In the bills, they found a red-brown dirt they moistened with water and streaked on their bodies. Au'auho, their name for the body paint, became precious to them, and they travelled far to dig in the bills. Spanish-speaking prospectors arrived and were curious to know where the Tohono O'odham had found the bright pigments. When the desert people led them to the three bills, the miners beard them say ajo (ab-bo), Spanish for garlic. But the prospectors knew the Indians had discovered cobre, copper.

At first I don't see him. It is around noon, and I have gone out to look at the defunct mine. More than 70 years of blasting and hauling scooped out this vast open pit, a mile and a half in diameter at its rim and coiling in a series of carved earthen benches to its cone-shaped core more than 900-feet below. My eyes grow dizzy trying to countthe benches, 25 I think, each 35to 40-feet high. A vortex of roadways and a single set of railroad tracks spiral along the flat tops of the benches to the bottom of the pit where a pair of power shovels stands silent like discarded toys. There's a seep pond down there, too, and, beside it, a ramada shades a picnic table. An uncanny breathless silence hovers over the pit. I close my eyes and try to imagine the sounds of active mining: train whistles, the rumble of ore crushers, the background whine of four-speed turbine generators. When I open them I see the man. I had not expected to see anyone. His face is pressed against the fence, fingers laced through chain links. His body taut, he peers intently into the pit. Where did he come from? He stands, motionless, for many minutes, then steps back a couple of paces and sits on a bench, hands resting on his knees, his bearing unnaturally erect.

the benches, 25 I think, each 35to 40-feet high. A vortex of roadways and a single set of railroad tracks spiral along the flat tops of the benches to the bottom of the pit where a pair of power shovels stands silent like discarded toys. There's a seep pond down there, too, and, beside it, a ramada shades a picnic table. An uncanny breathless silence hovers over the pit. I close my eyes and try to imagine the sounds of active mining: train whistles, the rumble of ore crushers, the background whine of four-speed turbine generators. When I open them I see the man. I had not expected to see anyone. His face is pressed against the fence, fingers laced through chain links. His body taut, he peers intently into the pit. Where did he come from? He stands, motionless, for many minutes, then steps back a couple of paces and sits on a bench, hands resting on his knees, his bearing unnaturally erect.

I walk over and say hello. He looks up at me, blankly, but returns my greeting, neither friendly nor unfriendly. From a distance, his body appeared slim and lithe. But he is old I can see now how old I can't say. Except for deep lines flaring from beside his nostrils and running down along his cheeks, his brown skin is smooth and supple. Its richly burnished umber contrasts starkly with his bleached T-shirt and faded khaki trousers, their starched creases as keen as a ruler. He stares ahead into the pit. His repose seems inviolable, and for a long while I keep silent. But I want to breach his quiescence, to get the details I think I need to tell Ajo's story. "Did you work in the mine?" Slowly he turns, looks at me squarely, and turns back to the pit. "Yes." I wait. "What did you do?" He doesn't move. "Loader." Behind us Indian Village Road leads around the pit to the settlement where Indian mine workers lived before mine expansion displaced them. St. Catherine's Indian Mission still stands there, but it is a museum now, packed with the remnantsand memorabilia of Ajo's vanished past.I want to ask the old man if he had lived in the village, to ask what he knows about Col. John Greenway whose grave lies beneath a marker near his ruined hacienda on the hill behind us. Greenway had come to the desert from Ishpeming, a fiercely cold place named for other Indians more than 2,000 miles north of here, and had brought from the Iron Range the open-pit method that would transform Arizona into the Copper State. Did the man sitting next to me know that? Did he know that this yawning pit before us had made Greenway famous, even beyond Ajo where he is revered as a founding father; that a statue of him stands in Washington, D.C.?

I say nothing.

Suddenly, the old man raises his left arm. Pointing to a distant palm on the opposite rim of the pit, he mutters something in a language I cannot understand and, in long, slow circles, lowers his hand to the stagnant pool.

I look at him. He is very still, his hands resting again on his knees.

"The water? What?"

He says nothing.

We wait, side by side. Directly overhead, the sun is a white blister. A solitary turkey vulture soars on an invisible column of warm air hundreds of feet above the pit. A single bead of sweat slides down my spine. I glance his way. He is very still. Reluctantly, I rise, walk to my pickup, and drive away.

Passing through in 1847 on their way down to silver mines near Magdalena, Sonora, Tom Childs, Sr. and Peter M. Brady found rawhide ore buckets and crude tools scattered around abandoned workings in the three small hills, mute evidence that others had tried to mine the surface veins of copper ore, had failed, and moved on. Brady tried anyway. He found investors to back his Arizona Mining and Trading Company, hauling the ore by mule team to Yuma and San Diego to be shipped around Cape Horn to smelters in Swansea, Wales. When an ore boat sank off Patagonia, the mine went down with it. Others, like Childs, worked small claims. But searing heat, scarce water, and long supply lines defeated them.

Speculators and schemers arrived. One was A. J. Shotwell. He persuaded St. Louis backers to sink their money into the St. Louis Copper Company, which failed, so the resourceful Shotwell formed the Rescue Copper Company. When that, too, became a cropper, he set up Shotwell TriMountain Copper Company and, later, the Cornelia Copper Company.

Close on the heels of promoters came crackpot inventors. "Professor" Fred L. McGahan introduced a contraption he promised would "melt the ore, and pure gold, silver, copper, etc. would be drawn off in separate spigots." The oxygen and hydrogen gases released in the process, he claimed, would be used to fire the furnace, making his McGahan Vacuum Smelter a sort of perpetual motion copper-processing machine. The only vacuum created was in the pockets of investors. One scheme failed after another, and by 1907 the townsite of Ajo was virtually deserted.

Meanwhile, up in the iron country, a young mining engineer dreamed that one day steam shovels gouging out open-pits would replace underground mines entirely. A Yale graduate, John Campbell Greenway

REDISCOVER AJO

(PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 38 AND 39) View of Ajo's plaza includes the Federated Protestant Church (left) and the Church of the Immaculate Conception.

(OPPOSITE PAGE) Ajo's huge open-pit mine is a legacy of John Campbell Greenway, who left his mark on the town as well as the land. In gratitude, Ajo residents in 1926 tried to change the town's name to Greenway.

(LEFT) Rail cars such as this were once used to transport the mine's copper ore. (BELOW) The Ajo Historical Society Museum devotes one section to memorabilia of John Campbell Greenway.

Had served with Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. Though only 39, he had already made a name for himself as a mine manager when the Calumet and Arizona Mining Company hired him in 1910 to run its underground copper mines at Bisbee. But Greenway thought that open-pits would work for copper and instructed geologist Ira B. Joralemon to find a good site. Joralemon recommended Ajo's three hills where exploratory drilling revealed huge reserves of copper ore. Quickly, Greenway optioned 70 percent of the New Cornelia Copper Company's stock. But Greenway still had three problems to solve: to find an effective ore-treatment process; to find dependable transportation; and to find enough water to support a big

WHEN YOU GO

Ajo is located on State Route 85, 110 miles southwest of Phoenix and 131 miles west of Tucson. Best months for visiting are November to April. Gila Bend, 42 miles to the north on Interstate Route 8, is a good place to check your gas gauge should you be traveling from the Phoenix area. There is one hotel and four motels in the town as well as several bed-and-breakfast homes. It's a good idea to call ahead for reservations. For telephone numbers, rates, and additional travel information, call the Ajo Chamber of Commerce, (602) 387-7742.

Where to stay in Ajo: What to see and do in the area:

Ajo is a gateway to the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge; Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument; Sonoita, Mexico; and the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation.

The terrain requires four-wheel-drive vehicles. No water available. For information and entry permits: Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge 1611 North Second Avenue Ajo, AZ 85321 Telephone: (602) 387-6483

(LEFT) The site of the old bandstand in Ajo's plaza is a popular spot for youngsters to play.

(OPPOSITE PAGE) Except for fresh paint and an added patio, the Guest House Inn looks much the same as when it was built 65 years ago.

Continued from page 41 mining operation. The first problem was turned over to Dr. Louis D. Ricketts, who built a prototype leaching plant at Douglas, Arizona, and later a 5,000-ton plant at Ajo. Greenway himself took care of the second by extending the Tucson, Cornelia and Gila Bend Railroad 44 miles north to Gila Bend to link with the Southern Pacific. The mining company solved the third problem by driving a shaft 630 feet beneath an ancient lava flow six miles north of Ajo to find vast stores of water, a source that still supplies the town.

In time the New Cornelia Branch of the Phelps Dodge Corporation rose to third in copper production in the United States. Periodically, when the bottom dropped out of copper prices or workers struck, the mine shut down. But the New Cornelia endured, prospering especially during wartime, and Ajo grew. The beginning of the end was a bitter strike that started in 1983. Unable to settle, Phelps Dodge closed the mine in 1985. Laid-off workers left town in droves, businesses failed, the population plummeted from nearly 6,000 to less than 2,000. Like so many other towns that collapsed with an economy based on a single extractive industry like logging or mining, Ajo was dying.

Early one cold and gray January morning in 1986, I drove into Ajo looking for a hot breakfast after foul weather had cut short a back-packing trip into Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. I came upon dreary rows of abandoned company-owned miners' houses and empty store fronts. But I also found Ajo's central plaza and Dago Joe's Copper Cafe. Dago Joe's was like most of the other small town chop houses I'd been in: enameled tabletops, waitresses limping about on tired feet, bedraggled Boston ferns in baskets hanging from the ceiling. It was the plaza that stopped me in my tracks. It was beautiful.

packing trip into Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. I came upon dreary rows of abandoned company-owned miners' houses and empty store fronts. But I also found Ajo's central plaza and Dago Joe's Copper Cafe. Dago Joe's was like most of the other small town chop houses I'd been in: enameled tabletops, waitresses limping about on tired feet, bedraggled Boston ferns in baskets hanging from the ceiling. It was the plaza that stopped me in my tracks. It was beautiful.

The plaza, indeed the entire town plan, is John Greenway's gift to Ajo. Intensely interested in architecture, Greenway and his wife Isabella envisioned Ajo as a gar-den city. The plaza, with a railroad station anchoring its base on the east and open to the west, was built on Spanish-Colonial Revival models. Portales along the sides shelter entrances to Dago Joe's, the post office, a theater turned rock and mineral museum, a branch of the Pima County Library, the Phelps Dodge Mercantile, a real estate office, and other commercial enterprises. The grassy courtyard originally featured a bandstand and is ringed with California fan palms and Mexican sky dusters. Drawings of the town plan show the streets of Ajo radiating fan-like from the

REDISCOVER AJO TRAVEL WITH THE FRIENDS OF ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

The magazine's volunteer auxiliary, the Friends of Arizona Highways, conducts tours of Arizona locations. Here is a partial schedule of trips:

Photo Tours

These are threeto five-day workshops for advanced amateur photographers. Top photo contributors to Arizona Highways will share their techniques with participants. Photo Tours include: March 8-10: Arizona Highways Picture Editor Peter Ensenberger and photographer Jerry Sieve will lead a tour through Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.

April 17-19: Frank Zullo, the West's premier photographer of the night sky, will demonstrate how to capture the luminous heavens from vantage points in the Superstition Mountains.

May 2-5: The scenic Aravaipa Canyon Wilderness Area will be the setting for a workshop by Christine Keith.

For complete information and reservations, telephone the Friends of Arizona Highways Travel Desk at (602) 271-5904.

Scenic Tours

Twoand three-day tours, sponsored in association with the Arizona Automobile Association, are scheduled regularly to the Grand Canyon and Lake Powell. For more information or to make reservations, telephone the AAA at (602) 2745805 in Phoenix, or 1 (800) 352-5382 statewide.

Longer scenic tours visit the state's most historic cities and towns, prehistoric sites, museums, gardens, and nature preserves. For reservations for these longer scenic tours, call the Friends' Travel Desk at (602) 271-5904. A tour highlight will be: May 6-10: Ray Manley, a senior Arizona Highways author and photographer, will escort a four-day exploration of northern Arizona's exciting Indian country.

Shutterbug Safaris

These are one-day photo excursions for the casual snapshooter. Photographers lead tours from Phoenix or Tucson to destinations within a 125-mile radius of each metropolitan area. Safari members will have the opportunity to photograph such scenic locations as the fabled Apache Trail, San Xavier Mission, and the Catalina Mountains.

For complete information, call (602) 271-5904.

plaza. Facing the plaza and flanking its axis to the west are two magnificent churches, the Church of the Immaculate Conception and the Federated Protestant Church. On a rise just behind the churches is the Curley School.

"The plaza was the focal point of community life," says Mike Walker. "It was the only grassy place in town, so it was cooler there in summer, and people came out at night to listen to music and dance."

Walker is telling me why he came home to Ajo. He has lived here most of his life except four years at college and a couple of years working in Phoenix after the mine closed. With his mother Norma, he manages the Guest House Inn, a bed and breakfast. In Ajo's heyday, Phelps Dodge entertained touring VIPs there, featuring cookouts in the arroyo behind the guesthouse and a small orchestra playing on the patio. The mining company was the hub of working and social life during Mike's growing-up years, and it's the memory of celebrations like the Christmas festival that moor his strong ties to this place.

"At Christmas, Santa Claus appeared in the school tower, and we could see him from the plaza. Then he would come down to the entrance where his carriage and reindeer waited to carry him to the plaza for the decorating of the Christmas tree. In the early days, Phelps Dodge used to send someone to the White Mountains to bring home a tree. But about 20 yearsago, the bandstand was removed and a tree was planted there."

Jim Armstrong runs Phelps Dodge's now limited operation and wants to retire in Ajo, his hometown. Like Walker, he is also committed to Ajo's survival. Retirement and tourism, he hopes, will breathe new life into the economy. Today, many of the 700 dismally vacant little houses I saw back in '86 have been bought and restored, most by retired people. The old mine manager's dwelling is also a bed and breakfast, the original mill house a deli, and there's a restaurant called the Depot in the old rail-road station in the plaza.

Mining built this town. The inescapable presence of the pit, slag heaps, smelter, and tailings ponds are reminders of that. But the plaza, with its colonnades, domes, archways, and stately palms - symbolic of order, symmetry, perhaps permanence is Ajo's heart.

It is late afternoon, and I drive out to the mine pit to look for the old man. His bench is empty. When I return at noon the next day, he's not there. I wait but he doesn't show up. No one that I ask knows anything about him.