It was named after a judge in the 1880's, though he never set foot in the town!
What an amazing place, possibly one of the most fascinating places we have visited (and we have visited a few). We drove the short 26 miles from Tombstone on Saturday, not quite knowing what to expect.
This was a real frontier town, it is built at the confluence of a couple of narrow canyons. Houses were crowded into the narrow gulches and built right up the sides of the mountains, the only access was, and still is, by steps, hundreds of them). It's origins are based in the discovery of copper, huge amounts of it, both high grade ore, which was dug out using mines, 2000 miles of mining tunnels are beneath Bisbee and low grade ore which was removed with huge open cast quarries, one of them is deep enough that you could invert Roseberry Topping and place it in there and it still would not fill it. The Copper Queen Mine being the most famous and though it is now quiet though by no means a ghost, town it once had a population of 100,000. Because of the many fires they have had the main streets are now mostly brick built and show Edwardian, but western, architecture.
The gulches are dry except in the rainy season (July August), when the main streets used to become rivers (now have slightly better drainage, though locals do not park their cars on the street in the wet season as they tend to float off down the road during storms).
Its wealth was based on Copper, Wooden houses were tightly packed on terraces where they clung to the mountain sides. Town burning was almost as regular as town flooding! The flooding was a mixed blessing as there was no drainage system, so waste (yes I mean all waste) would be just chucked and allowed to dissipate. The local hotels and bars, of which there were many as much of the population were single miners, used a system whereby they would dump all waste under the building in like a basement. When the rain came they removed the lowest side wall and allowed nature to remove the years sewage. Worked OK with a really good flood, but not so good in drier years. Another problem was the cemetery which was up the canyon affectionately known as Brewery Gulch, nothing wrong with a cemetery problem came with the storms as not only did the water wash away the dirt it also washed away the bodies down the main street.
Once the copper gave out in the 1970's the town nearly died and became almost empty, but was taken over by hippies, many from California, who claimed squatters rights and renovated the buildings and sold them. The hippy atmosphere still remains and is now a arty crafty/antiquey with nice coffee shops and organic food. It is the southern most mile high town in USA and when they talk about being high, they really mean it.
We learned a lot of this history by taking the trolley bus tour, which was excellent value at $6.00 and gave us a real insight into the town.
I must say that I loved this town and would perhaps vote it as one of my favourites, even more so than perhaps Santa Fe in NM.
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