HUFFINGTON
05.19.13
LOVE AND HATE
phalt, and Bisbee is in the thick of
all of it.
EDDIE-X /FLICKR
A BOHEMIAN MINING TOWN
Bisbee comes into view shortly after you pass through the Route 80
tunnel coming out of Tombstone.
You’ll find it when you see the
enormous “B” looking down from
one of the Mule Mountains. Old
Bisbee is splayed out in the valley
below. Built in the 19th century,
well before the onset of the automobile, the historic section of
town is a pastiche of Old Europe
in the American southwest, with
narrow streets, closely bunched
houses and a host of art galleries,
coffee shops and restaurants.
Bisbee was built around the
Copper Queen copper mine, which
for a time was one of the largest
such mines in the country. When
copper was booming, so was Bisbee. In the early 20th century, the
town was the largest city between
St. Louis and San Francisco. It
even had its own stock exchange —
the former exchange is now a bar.
The mine itself ceased operation in 1975 when falling copper
prices made it unprofitable, but
its legacy is everywhere. Most notably, there’s the 300-acre, 900foot deep hole in the middle of
town, known as the Lavender Pit.
It’s named after Harry Lavender,
the former manager of the Phelps
Dodge Corporation, the company
that built it. Holes that big don’t
fill up naturally, and filling it now
would be prohibitively expensive.
And so it remains.
There are also slag piles scattered around town, you can still
take tours of the old mine, and the
Copper Queen Hotel is allegedly
haunted. The town itself is made
up of several smaller jurisdictions
bunched together, the product of
the various ethnically segregated
mining camps that over time congealed into Bisbee proper. The
more affluent ward features the
A view of the
Lavender Pit
copper mine.