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Busy Bisbee

We finished our underground tours and headed for a town in far south Arizona known for . . . a giant underground copper mine. The town is Bisbee, and the Copper Queen mine, closed for 50 years, still dominates the landscape there. But the town has become a place for artists, artistes, shopkeepers, and retired folks.


The main street of shops in Bisbee, Arizona

We headed that way, just about an hour from Karchner Caverns, because I remembered stories in early Price Hill Historical Society newsletters about brothers named Bisbee from Price Hill who moved to Arizona and made it rich as merchants. That’s all I could remember, and it turns out my memory was faulty—when I consulted with the folks at the Historical Society, they told me it was five brothers named Babbitt, not Bisbee, and they had staked their claim as purveyors of everything western pioneers needed in Flagstaff, not Bisbee.

  
A gypsy wagon on the street near the Knights of Pythias hall in Bisbee

Nevertheless, it turned out to be a cool little town, and we had a nice lunch at the Cornucopia CafĂ©, which claims to have been in operation since 1880. The next morning, we had breakfast at the Bisbee Breakfast Club, or BBC, which was touted as “not to be missed.” They were right about that. The BBC is down the road a bit, in a suburb of Bisbee called Lowell, built to house all the miners when the Copper Queen was in operation. Someone had the brilliant idea of parking old cars (probably most of them not in running condition) along the main street of Lowell. It’s a neat idea.


A street that could be a movie set
in the Bisbee suburb of Lowell

We stayed at the Queen Mine RV Park, which is on a rise across the highway from Old Bisbee, and built right into the side of the mountain where the mine was. The mine tour begins just down the hill from where we were camped. It was just a 5-minute walk downhill to the old town (it took a little longer to walk back up the hill), and though there were a lot of goofy shops and art galleries filled with paintings by not the greatest artists, there was also a Fiber Arts Guild clubhouse with a gift shop, and I got a tour of the place by the lady who was manning the shop. Lots of big looms, with weaving in process, plus they had knitters and quilters and people who dyed and made art from fabrics and fibers. Very cool.


A poster explaining natural dyes from
the Fiber Arts Guild in Bisbee

I’m going on too long about Bisbee, but it was very interesting and enjoyable; we walked down a long street of shops, bars, hotels, and a theatre with a painting of silhouettes of the Beatles from the cover of Help! We stayed two nights mostly because Mike had to do an emergency repair to the camper’s wheel bearings cap, which involved taking the wheel off, to get us to Phoenix where there is a satellite Scamp office and repair shop, and we can get a replacement cap. Plus some maintenance that is due for it.

We enjoyed our stay right on the old mine, which had an interesting history. In 1917, the Phelps Dodge Mining Company, with the assistance of the Cochise County sheriff, illegally rounded up 1,300 striking mine workers, their supporters, and citizen bystanders whom they accused of being members of the socialist Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union. The kidnapped miners were packed into cattle cars and “deported” 200 miles away in New Mexico, where the deportees were warned not to return to Bisbee. The event is referred to as the Bisbee Deportation.

The Copper Queen Mine’s Lavender Pit, named for 
the Phelps Dodge general manager Harrison Lavender

Though we were camped right above the open pit left from copper mining and only a few hundred feet from the mine entrance now used to give tours of the underground Copper Queen, we did not take a tour; by then, we had been underground enough, I suppose.


The old Copper Queen Copper entrance,
right below where we were camped in Bisbee


And our little campground above the mine






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