Bisbee

You wouldn’t guess it today, but Bisbee once was a bustling mining town, with a population of more than 20,000 in the early 1900s. The town owed its prosperity to the Mule Mountains’ abundant minerals — particularly copper, which earned Bisbee the nickname of “Queen of the Copper Camps.” Into the mining boom came the Copper Queen Hotel, constructed around the turn of the century as a place for dignitaries and Copper Queen Mine investors to stay. It wasn’t an easy hotel to build: Part of the mountainside had to be blasted away, and water had to be pumped uphill from Main Street. Once the hotel opened, though, it was state of the art: It featured 2-foot-thick walls to keep it cool in the summer, along with Tiffany-glass fittings on the Palm Room’s cathedral ceiling. Today, the Tiffany glass is gone, but the hotel retains much of its original charm, along with other reminders of the past: At least three ghosts of people who died at or near the Copper Queen are purported to haunt its halls.

DIRECTIONS: The Copper Queen Hotel is located at 11 Howell Avenue in Bisbee.
CONSTRUCTED: 1898-1902
BUILDER: Copper Queen Consolidated Mining Co.
INFORMATION: Copper Queen Hotel, 520-432-2216 or www.copperqueen.com