TOURING THE GHOST THAT NEVER WAS

SMALL-TOWN TOURING GLOBE the Onetime Copper Town that Refused to Fade Away

GLOBE COULD HAVE ENDED UP A ghost town. Its history embodies as many ups and downs as the steep hills on which this central Arizona community perches. Globe, though, takes its problems and changes them to advantages - when life gives folks here lemons, they make lemonade. On a hill overlooking Globe's Cobre Valley stands what used to be the gray two-story Noftsger Hill School. Abandoned and left to crumble, this could have been one of Globe's Grade A lemons. Instead, Pamela Hulme, a Globe native, and her husband, Frank, transformed the 1907 building into the Noftsger Hill Inn, a bed and breakfast with plenty of nostalgia. Walking its wide hallways, I remember my year in Miss Augusta Flake's fourth-grade class in Snowflake, where girls played jacks and boys ran up and down floors just like this. My bedroom in the wonderful inn was once a first-grade classroom with large southfacing windows. The smooth wooden floors tempt me to take off my shoes and slide in my stocking feet. Desks with lift-up lids and inkwells remind me so much of the ones from my childhood, I have to curb my urge to stick gum under the desk. I do write on the chalkboard hanging on the north wall, but, then, so have other visitors. John and Patty from Phoenix wrote: "Your B&B is really cool. What a great use for an old school. We loved the foods, we loved the moods. But, most of all, we enjoyed you dudes." Another notation, by Rosamond Bennett, says, "I went to first and second grade in this school in 1918 and 1919."

I laugh when I discover the old cloakroom now serves as a bathroom, complete with an old-fashioned claw-foot tub. I spent a good share of my fourth-grade year sitting on a hard little chair in Miss Flake's cloakroom because I talked in class. I feel deliciously guilty as I fill the old tub with warm water and bubble bath salts for a good soaking. This is defnitely a better use for a cloakroom. From the old schoolhouse inn, I can see most of the town of Globe, founded in 1876 after rich silver deposits were located nearby. Sitting at an elevation of 3,500 feet, the site boasts a moderate climate in addition to minerals. Several stories tell how the town got its name, but the most common one claims a miner found a large round silver nugget with markings resembling the continents on Earth, so the name Globe seemed ordained. Although isolated by rugged mountain terrain, the Globe Hills to the northeast and the Pinals to the southwest, Globe grew steadily. By 1880, 704 citizens called the place home. Rough and rowdy at first, the mining camp gradually took on the trappings of civilization, and by 1882 the Methodists worshipped in a real church with a bell in its tower. Nicknamed "God's Alarm Clock," the bell not only called people to worship, but alerted the community when fire and mine disasters occurred or warned of Indian attacks. Once, when a rancher and his wife were killed by Indians, the bell sounded, and the women and children gathered in the church until the marauders were caught. A newer church now sits on the site, but the old bell's still there.

The mining boom lasted only four years. By the early 1880s, the silver and Globe's future were disappearing. But instead of fading quietly into oblivion like many other mining camps, the town looked around for a new savior and found it in copper. The Old Dominion Mine, organized in 1880, revived Globe and sent it barreling toward the new century.

With dozens of restaurants and watering holes open 24 hours a day, not to mention the abodes of shady ladies, Globe was a lively camp. One of the merchant entrepreneurs attracted to the burgeoning town was G.W.P. Hunt, who would become the state's first governor.

The Old Dominion became one of the most productive copper mines in the world before falling victim to the Depression. Globe sponsors a yearly tour of the area, and the historic mine is one of the scheduled stops. A tour van ride up a steep, winding road, past the old smelter foundations and a black slag pile, delivers us at the head frame, where the miners and equipment were lowered down into the shaft. I crane my neck and dizzily look up at rusty wheels, cables, and a chain hoist that swings slowly from enormous metal beams.

Three large hoppers, orange with rust, ooze hardened white lime out the seams like a melting ice-cream cone frozen in time. At the nearby hoist house, where large motors once operated noisily, a discarded mine "rescue box" lies at an angle, abandoned on top of a giant steam engine. At one time, the box sat mounted on the back of a truck, loaded with medical supplies and ready to rush to any mine accident.

In his book Copper Bottom Tales, local historian Bill Haak wrote that in the first 10 months of 1917, the Old Dominion Bulletin reported 307 injuries, many of them from "falls of rock and ore." The high injury rate resulted in trained rescue crews at each mine. This old rescue box saw plenty of excitement in its day, but now its doors hang ajar, its many small cubicles empty.

A hole in the tin roof of the hoist house lets in a shaft of sunlight, illuminating a catwalk walk high high above the silent equipment. In its heyday, the Old Dominion produced a total of $134 million in copper, silver, and gold. Locals liked to boast that, at one time, all U.S. copper coins were made from Globe copper.

Plagued with flooding problems and low copper prices, the Old Dominion closed for good in 1931. Today the shafts and tunnels below the 14th level are filled with water, but Globe turned even this catastrophe into a blessing: The flooded Old Dominion now serves as a main source of water for industry and general consumption.

Back in the van, our guide drives us to other historic buildings and sites on the tour. I'm especially interested in the J.C. Penney building downtown. I traveled from Snowflake to Globe to buy school clothes here when I was a child. Current owner of the building, Candy Schermerhorn, author of The Great American Beer Cookbook, and her husband, Mark, converted the onetime clothing store into the Globe Brewery and Barbecue Company. It has an immense antique tiger mahogany back bar and a curved 29-foot bar. Here she serves barbecue and steaks along with English ales and old-fashioned sodas she makes in the basement.

Candy started her business in Globe because the people were so friendly. "They

didn't care that I wasn't born here," she says. I notice this characteristic, also. Every-where I go, I'm greeted with a smile and a "How are you?" It is hard not to feel welcome in Globe. Like Candy's store-turned-restaurant, many of Globe's other once-vacant buildings have new uses. The Old Dominion Warehouse has emerged as an antique store and art gallery. The oldest intact building in Globe constructed in 1876-78 now houses an office supply store. Michael and Sarah Anna Day, she, a former art teacher at Cibecue on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, transformed the Gila Valley Trust & Bank Company building into a boutique called Simply Sarah. The sign on a door says "Open 10 A.M. to dusk, Tuesday through Saturday." The store Globe closes early because it doesn't have any electric-light fixtures. Three original skylights boasting 502 square feet of glass provide all the light in the elegant boutique. The building is serene now, but in 1907 a financial panic hit Globe, forcing the town banks to issue certificates, called "shin-plasters," in place of cash. Globe merchants refused to honor the certificates until a local vendor offered to exchange them for his homemade tamales. The citizens decided the shinplasters must be worth something after all, and that's how the Tamale Man saved Globe from a financial disaster. Globe had other problems in 1907, as well, especially with the rowdies. But Sher-iff Henry Thompson was determined to enforce the law in the wild mining town. When the sheriff arrested one William Baldwin for murder, an angry mob wanted to skip the trial and take the culprit straight to the gallows. So Thompson came up with a wily plan. While the angry crowd spent the night outside the jail demanding Baldwin be turned over to them, a deputy smuggled the prisoner out the back door. The pair spent the night in the outhouse of the First Baptist Church. The next morn-ing, Baldwin was transported under a tarp on a hand-operated rail car to the Graham County Jail. He was later found guilty by a jury and hanged in Solomonville.

A visit to the Old West Jail & Sheriff's Office still offers a sobering experience. The lockup remains much the same as when it closed in 1978. Inside are rows of small green metal cells, each containing two metal beds. A door slams, and the clanging re-verberates through the empty cells. I feel claustrophobia setting in, and I'm as anx-ious to leave the jail as any of its onetime prisoners.

Outside, I notice a narrow walkway connects the upper story of the jail with the Gila County Courthouse, so prisoners could easily be shuffled from jail to judge. The courthouse, built in 1906 from locally quarried gray stone called dacite, is reached by an impressive series of steep front steps. Inside, the copper-sheathed banisters glim-mer in the afternoon sunlight. The court-house now houses the Cobre Valley Center for the Arts, and the local Quilters Guild is displaying its quilts during my visit. As I wander among the quilts and paintings, I

WHEN YOU GO

Globe is 87 miles east of Phoenix on U.S. Route 60. To inquire about the Noftsger Hill Inn, call (520) 425-2260; the Cobre Valley Center for the Arts, (520) 425-0884; the Gila County Historical Museum, (520) 425-7385. Other area attractions include Besh-Ba-Gowah, (520) 425-0320, a 14th-century pueblo with more than 300 rooms, a museum, a botanical garden, and hiking trails. Boyce Thompson Arboretum, (520) 689-2811, offers acres of arid-region plants, an easy climb to a lovely view, and a picnic area beneath sheltering trees. For a brochure with a drive-yourself mine tour and for more general information, including annual events, call the Greater Globe-Miami Chamber of Commerce toll-free at (800) 804-5623, or (520) 425-4495.

SMALL-TOWN TOURING

Hear a rhythmic pounding, and my curios-ity draws me back outside. Behind the courthouse, Jerry Hughes chews on a cigar and swings a heavy hammer to form a bar into a tool called a dig-ging bar while his son, Lee, holds the red-hot metal bar in place. Hughes is a blacksmith, and like his father and grandfather before him and his son after him, he worked for the copper mines. He has his grandfather's tools and anvil and, like the town, he is using the old to make something new.

Over on Ash Street, the columns of the Globe High School glow in the soft light before sunset. Education has always been an important as well as colorful part of Globe history. In 1891 construction on the new Central School was finished before the residents realized it was built too close to a house of ill repute. The law required 400 feet between a school and a "parlor house," and a heated argument started between Jennie Scott, the operator of the establish-ment, and the school board.

The town quickly joined the fracas. The patrons of education demanded Sheriff Thompson close down Jennie's place of business. Jennie's staunch supporters claimed she was there first and petitioned the beleaguered sheriff to move the school. With the wisdom of Solomon, the sher-iff carefully measured the distance between the two buildings and found the 400-foot limit fell four feet into Jennie's parlor. He told the proprietor to confine her business activities to the back rooms, which were within the legal limit, and both Jennie and the school stayed put.

School business today is conducted from the Globe Schools Administration Building, next to the high school. Once a private home, its brown roof drapes dramatically over a vine-covered porch. The structure provides yet another example of Globe's ability to put its past to good use.

In the corner of the building's yard, a large evergreen tree stands at an odd angle. At some time in its history, the tree tilted to the south, but then it righted itself to stand tall and erect. Like this tree, Globe is a survivor. The town should have faded quietly away into history with only tailings and empty build-ings to show it ever existed. But it bent with the winds of change and each time pulled itself back up straight. Globe is still going strong, using its past to turn lemons into a great glass of lemonade.