M&T Alpine-Tales: Bisbee, Arizona

Nestled in the hills of the Mule Mountains, a short distance south of Tombstone, the town of Bisbee remains a reminder of its former days of prosperity. From 1877, after the discovery of rich surface deposits that led to the establishment of copper mines, Bisbee rapidly grew from a tiny frontier outpost into one of the greatest mining centers in the Southwest. By the early 1900s, rich copper mines transformed a once-rough camp into one of the largest and most cultured cities between St Louis and San Francisco.

For almost a century, from 1877 to 1975, when the last of the underground mines closed, Bisbee's mountains yielded more than 8 billion pounds of copper as well as gold, silver, lead and zinc, representing one of the most productive mining districts in the world.
It never ceases to amaze me that prospectors seemed to know where to look and recognize the signs for areas with potential minerals. They knew how to read rocks but likely more often than not it was sheer luck to discover a seam with rich ore deposits. Now companies are able to drill and extract core samples from the earth, sometimes to a depth of 3,000 feet below the surface. Geologists study the layers of rock for traces of metal and clues about geological processes. But back in 1877, it was army scouts who stumbled upon rust-stained rocks and bad-tasting water in the nearby hills, finding clues that minerals lay below. Timing was fortuitous. The huge copper deposits were discovered just as electric light and power was emerging as a brand new technology requiring miles of copper wire to carry electricity to cities and towns around the world. And thus Bisbee thrived and grew as a mining town, attracting a work force from all over the US and overseas.

We took a tour of the Queen Mine, led by a retired miner who started working in this mine the day he graduated from high school.

We suited up with hard hats, a safety vest, a brass tag (which is a form of identity for each miner), and a flashlight.

The same train that transported miners daily to their stope workings carried us 1,500 feet into the mountain side. As we jostled along, an image popped into my head of seven dwarfs, picks in hand, singing "Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to work we go...."

Learning about the daily life of a miner, the various jobs, the safety risks, the back-breaking work in tight and dangerous places, and the pressure, was enlightening.
I couldn't imagine choosing this line of work, essentially spending 8 or more hours underground in the dark, with the reality that should things go wrong, you might not make it back out. And after the hour-long tour, I was more than relieved to be back in the sunshine, both feet firmly planted back above ground.

our guide pointing out the holes filled with dynamite and explaining how he
drilled the holes and lit the fuses

one of the minecarts filled with ore

Here is a link to a video Michael put together of our tour:
Queen Mine Tour

Afterwards, we walked around town with its imposing brick buildings, now relics of former grandeur.

We strolled up an interesting alley, its walls plastered with paintings and wall art. I marveled that they remain undisturbed and intact in this dry climate. These would never survive in drippy Seattle!

At the Mining Museum, we spent several hours learning about Bisbee's history and growth as an important and lucrative mining center. The second floor was particularly interesting, focusing on informative and excellent displays about the mining industry, its history and evolution, as well as the daily procedures and practices of miners.

Here I learned the importance of the brass tag we were given to pin on our vests on the tour. Brassing in is the term for the daily procedure of reporting for work. The timekeeper handed each miner a brass tag stamped with a number that was a vital piece of identification and sometimes key to survival. The miner kept his brass with him during each shift underground, returning it to the timekeeper at the end of the workday. A missing tag could mean that a miner was either lost or injured underground, and a search was quickly organized.

brass tag board

In most cases, the "lost" miner had simply forgotten to return his brass. Men who spent precious after-work hours searching for a missing friend took a dim view of such absentmindedness, especially if they found the man comfortably seated in his favorite bar.

timekeeper with brass tag board

Despite the intensity and ever-present danger of their jobs, miners seemed to have a sense of humor based on several of these plaques in the museum:

Miners also created their own language of nicknames, some more complimentary than others. Here are a few examples from the memoirs of a Bisbee miner, John Shaffer (1930-2001):

WINE DROP: Wine Drop often drank a drop too much and came to work hung over
RAINBOW: Rainbow Bread used to advertise that it took eight hours to make a loaf. When one miner got lazy, everyone started calling him "Rainbow, the eight-hour loaf"
KNIFE and FORK: One miner had a Spanish surname that translated into English as "knife" so his partner naturally became known as "fork"
TWEETY BIRD: A large man with a high-pitched voice
MYNA BIRD: He talked endlessly but said nothing
FLYING NUN: A Mexican miner with a big handlebar mustache got this nickname when he fell 24 feet down a raise
CHERRY TREE: He was prone to make light of the truth - the opposite of the tale of George Washington
HARD LUCK HENRY: Henry constantly had bad luck and wasn't too proud to cry about it
FREIGHT TRAIN: Huffing and puffing, clanging and banging, this guy made you think a freight was coming down the drift
STINKY: One of those unfortunate names that follow a boy into manhood, but the only effect it seemed to have on this fellow was to make him more successful
TINY: this name was used in two ways. One "Tiny" was the smallest in the family and the other was a hell of a big guy
MECHANICAL MAN: This man walked with a stiff-jointed rolling deliberate gait, like a robot

stunning colors found deep inside the earth

I enjoyed the displays showing the exquisite colorful crystals lining cave-like openings that miners would occasionally break into. Thousands of such "oxidation caves" lay hidden in the limestone hills around Bisbee. Some small cavities were the size of footballs, others were openings the size of football fields.

Workers in the Lavender Pit occasionally unearthed deposits of turquoise. Famous for its dark blue color and much prized for jewelry, the high-quality turquoise found in this area is known by its trade name, Bisbee Blue.

Bisbee Blue

A major change in copper mining took place after 1910 when new technology of open-pit mining turned mountains into canyons. It was more economical and simpler to take the whole mountain instead of riddling it with tunnels. Open pit methods target low-grade ore but to produce enough copper to make a profit, huge quantities of low-grade ore had to be excavated. Methods of mass production had to be applied, using mechanical shovels, railroads, new processing technologies and a much smaller labor force.

an open pit mine

Copper mining ceased in Bisbee in 1975 because the ore ran out. However mining experts say there are hundreds of millions of tons of ore around Bisbee. If rock contains even tiny specks of metal that can be extracted for a profit, it's ore. So as extraction technology improves, waste rock is reclassified as ore. In theory, mining could return to Bisbee, though it would be an entirely new operation using chemistry and electricity to extract copper from piles of rocks. This type of mining is more environmentally friendly, requires a higher-tech worker, and is safer. Bisbee's future remains to be seen and the town may yet rise again like the mythical phoenix.

Perhaps the most thought provoking section of the museum was the one illustrating how much ore would have to be extracted to provide the 25 pounds of copper contained in items that the average American purchases each year.