Kingman: Heart of Route 66 Is Still Beating

The county seat of Mohave County is located in a pass between the rugged Cerbat Mountains on the north and the tall Hualapai Mountains on the south, affording passage from the Hualapai Valley on the east to the Sacramento Valley to the west. There the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad laid tracks in March 1883 heading for the Colorado River and built a siding where water could be brought from Beale Spring a few miles north. The town that developed at the siding was named after A & P locating engineer Lewis Kingman. It grew slowly but eventually outlasted four other earlier county seats to become the commercial and social center of northwestern Arizona. Its location made it “Arizona’s Gateway to Boulder Dam” in the 1930s and now the “Heart of Route 66” since the venerable highway became a historic byway.

In 1864 the first territorial legislature created four original counties named for four native tribes, Mohave, Yuma, Yavapai and Pima. Mohave City, the small civilian community at Fort Mohave established in 1859 to protect travelers on the Beale Road from Indian attacks, was made county seat. In 1867, soon after the western half of the county was given by Congress to Nevada, county government moved to nearby Hardyville, another Colorado River port. With Mohave and Hualapai warriors under military supervision, exploitation of gold and silver deposits began in the Cerbat range. The mining camp called Cerbat became county seat in 1873. Within four years Mineral Park had become the newest boomtown to win the title of county seat. But all these communities eventually became ghost towns, while Kingman’s water supply and position on the railroad guaranteed its survival as a supply point. Railroad boxcars brought needed goods faster and cheaper than Colorado River sternwheelers. Kingman was named county seat in 1887 before its population had even reached 300.

This view of Kingman looking southwest about 1916 shows the brand new county courthouse (1915) in center with the two-story county jail (1910) next door on the east. Above and to the right of the courthouse is the Desert Power and Water Company electric plant (1907) that served Kingman and nearby mines. It was replaced with power from Boulder Dam in 1938 and the building now serves as a visitor center. The two-story building with screened porch at left is Elks Lodge No 468 (1903-04) on the corner of 4th and Beale Streets. There was an opera house on the ground floor. The downtown business district is out of view at left.


The relatively quiet community served the needs of miners in the Cerbat range on the north and the Black Mountains to the west, cattle ranchers to the east and travelers along the transcontinental railroad. Kingman Mercantile Company, Central Commercial Company and Lovin & Withers mercantile did a profitable business. The recession of 1893 led to bankruptcy for the Atlantic & Pacific RR, which had to be reorganized as the Santa Fe Pacific in 1897. When prosperity returned, the Arizona and Utah Railroad was created in 1899 with about 24 miles of track heading north from McConnico, just west of Kingman on the Santa Fe, north to Mineral Park and Chloride. The Fred Harvey Company opened an “eating house” in 1902 downtown on 4th Street to serve meals to travelers on Santa Fe trains without dining cars. The next year, the Santa Fe Pacific was absorbed by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe. Kingman’s Harvey House didn’t provide lodging but there were several fine hotels in town, including Hotel Beale (1901) and Hotel Brunswick (1909). As the population grew from 600 to more than 800, residents enjoyed telephone service (1894) and electricity (1909).

Harvey girls continued to serve hungry railroad passengers in Kingman until 1932. Fire destroyed the interior in 1952 and the structure was demolished soon after. This well-worn Fred Harvey issued postcard is from about 1908. The view is looking west with 4th Street crossing the tracks in the foreground. The passenger depot (1907) is located out of view at right.

Transportation eventually overtook mining and ranching to dominate the economy. By 1915 the National Old Trails Road was routed through Kingman where motorists could get service and repairs at the Old Trails Garage. In 1926, federal highway officials assigned numbers to replace the named highways and Kingman was then a stop on US 66. Despite deep economic depression in the 1930s, highway travel increased. Automobile travel was a lower cost alternative to the train and US 66 was a direct route from the Oklahoma dustbowl to California. New motor hotels, cafes and gasoline stations appeared at both entrances to Kingman. Paving the dirt highway continued through the 1930s, until autos could drive across northern Arizona on continuous concrete or asphalt by the end of the decade.

The depression years were nevertheless felt in Kingman. The Arizona & Utah railroad, taken over by the ATSF in 1905 and renamed Western Arizona Railway went out of business in 1933. Many gold mines in the Cerbat and Black Mountains had closed due to changes in the Gold Standard.

New Deal stimulus funding also helped build the modern airline industry during the great depression, principally through federal funding of airmail. In 1929, Charles Lindberg designed cross-country airline service flying passengers during the day on Ford Trimotors then putting them into sleeping berths on Pennsy and Santa Fe trains to continue their journey overnight. Port Kingman airport was dedicated that June. Transcontinental Air Transport planes left Clovis, New Mexico at 8:10 in the morning headed for Los Angeles by 5:52 p.m., with fifteen minute refueling stops in Albuquerque, Winslow and Kingman. Their competitor, however, had beaten them into the air. Western Air Express had built its own airport in Kingman and begun flights earlier in 1929. TAT soon merged with WAE to become TWA and continue flights without the trains in Douglas DC-3 airliners. Even before the DC-3, longer-range aircraft had eliminated the stop at Kingman, but not its importance to aviation.

This view of Front Street, looking west, is from about 1928, just after the National Old Trails Road became Route 66. Businesses in the block between 5th and 4th Streets were, the Commercial Hotel, Taylor-Owens Motors Ford dealership, Tarr McComb & Ware Com’l. Co. hardware and mining supply (with green sign above), Citizens Utilities, The Popular Store, Stratton’s Grocerteria, Lum Sing Yow’s White House Café (1899) and finally, Keister’s Kingman Drug Co. on the corner of 4th.

The intersection of Front and 4th Streets is depicted about 1930. To the west across 4th from Kingman Drug Co. is the former Lovin & Withers mercantile building with the round corner. Henry Lovin came to Kingman in 1893 and later served as Sheriff of Mohave County, County Supervisor, state senator and investor in the Gold Road mines. Lovin also owned an ice house, Coca-Cola bottling plant and several homes and cottages. The building was demolished in the 1950s.

This is the business block between 3rd and 4th Streets, looking east about 1940. Another corner drugstore at 3rd, Eaton’s Desert Drug Walgreen Agency, is followed by a cocktail lounge, Gaddis Café, and Old Trails Garage (1915) Chevrolet-Buick dealership, which also sold Signal or Conoco gas over the years. Kingman Drug later became the Walgreen Agency and the Gaddis became the Frontier Cafe. Next is the three-story Hotel Brunswick, built in 1909 and renovated to reopen in 1997. Lockwood’s Café is in the Brunswick but moved shortly after this photo was taken. The two-story Hotel Beale (1901) is at right with the large sign on the roof. Andy Devine grew up in the Beale Hotel after his father purchased it in 1906. Front Street was renamed Andy Devine Avenue in 1955. The postcard was published for Desert Drugs by the Albertype Co., Brooklyn N.Y.

As air, rail and highway travel contributed to Kingman’s growth, the federal government launched a depression stimulus project to build a massive flood control and power dam in Boulder Canyon on the Colorado River. Highway 93 was built from Kingman to the construction site creating a third entrance to town lined with motels, cafes and gas stations. The Gateway to Boulder Dam (renamed Hoover Dam in 1948) was becoming more than just a quick lunch stop. In 1939 Clark Gable and Carole Lombard chose a Kingman church for their wedding, to take advantage of Arizona’s more lenient marriage law. The same year, hometown boy Andy Devine was paid $10,000 to drive John Wayne’s stagecoach before the cameras in Monument Valley.

World War Two brought big planes back to Kingman. A military training base was quickly built on the alkali flats of Hualapai Valley about 5 miles east of Kingman. From 1942 to 1946 about 30,000 bomber gunners were trained at Kingman Army Air Field. And when the war was won, due to its location at a major rail line and highway, the base became Storage Depot 41 of the War Assets Corporation, the largest of five sites across the country. Hundreds of big bombers were flown to Kingman for disposal. A few planes were sold. But by the end of the program in 1948, 7,000 mostly B-17 Flying Fortresses had been scrapped and 70 million pounds of aluminum shipped out.

Some of the 5,400 B-17 Flying Fortresses awaiting salvage are seen in this view from 1947. Hundreds of B-24 and B-29 bombers and P-38 Lightning planes were also scrapped at Kingman. The storage area extended for six and a half miles along the Santa Fe railroad and Route 66 northeast of Kingman.

Transportation has brought awful tragedy to Kingman too. The railroad and highway saw their share of fatal accidents over the years. Air Force training during World War Two was dangerous and there were numerous deadly crashes. In 1944, a bus from the Army Air Field crossing the railroad tracks was hit by a train, killing 28 soldiers. In 1973 a Santa Fe propane car developed a leak and caught fire. Fire trucks responded but the railcar soon exploded in a huge fireball, killing 12, including most of the fire department.

Ever since automobiles took to the road Kingman has been a convenient stop for gasoline, repairs, food and lodging. Mrs. Willie McCasland established the City Café on east Route 66 in 1945, next to a 24-hour Texaco station operated by Arlise Finch. Curteich of Chicago printed this C. T. Art-Colortone view in 1951.

Nationwide chains began replacing locally owned motels in the 1950s when this postcard view of Kingman’s TraveLodge was issued. At the time it offered 32 rooms cooled by refrigeration, with phones, free TV and a heated swimming pool. By 2007 it had expanded to 65 rooms with free continental breakfast and high-speed internet. Norm Mead in Tempe published the card, printed by Dexter Press in West Nyack, N. Y.

A Plastichrome postcard by Petley Studios of Phoenix from around 1965 shows the setting, looking west, surrounded on three sides by foothills. You can see the railroad as it curves through town toward the south and McConnico in the Sacramento Valley. The four-lane highway parallel with the railroad is Route 66, or Andy Devine Avenue. At the lower right corner, Route 66 is turning north to pass by the former site of the airbase and storage depot. Highway 93 is heading through the Cerbat range toward Hoover Dam in upper center.

Kingman continued to grow as traffic increased on Route 66 and Highway 93 after the war. The county seat benefited from the construction of Davis Dam (1942-1953) and postwar development of retirement and recreational communities at Lake Havasu City, Golden Shores and Bullhead City. Duval Corporation opened a copper mine in 1959 northwest of Kingman. Though it discontinued operations in 1981, it reopened last year. The population of Kingman nearly doubled during the 1990s and is now almost 28,000.

See also:
Luis & Paula Vega, 4 Wheel Drive Roads of Mohave County, Arizona (2000) One of the best books on the area in recent years, it goes beyond a focus on geology and mining to explain a lot of geography and history.

Jerome Always Teetered On the Brink

Arizona’s “Billion Dollar Copper Camp” it was called, “America’s Most Unique City,” “Largest Ghost City in America,” “One Mile High With a Fifty-Mile View.” Despite all the accolades Jerome has spent the past 126 years perilously clinging to the steep slopes of Cleopatra Hill both literally and figuratively. After each economic windfall, following each period of prosperity came some new threat to the community, some calamity, often threatening Jerome’s very existence. As a result, life for most residents has been hard.

The centennial year of 1876 brought prospectors to a silver deposit on the eastern slope of the Black Hills overlooking the Verde Valley. Spanish explorers named the Verde River, probably after the extensive greenstone rock formations found in its valley walls. Thirteen mining claims were consolidated in 1882 to form the United Verde Copper Company. The following year a company town was started and a post office established, named after principle investor Eugene Jerome, a New York lawyer and cousin of Winston Churchill’s American mother. The silver would pay the cost of smelting copper, leaving all the copper as profit for investors.

This lithograph shows the United Verde mine and smelter in upper Bitter Creek Gulch in 1884, just above where the open pit is now. At the time copper had recently been added to the original silver workings. In those days the Black Hills were verdant in more ways than one. But by 1900, sulphur-dioxide fumes from a greatly enlarged smelter had killed all vegetation around Jerome.

The remote location hindered development in the 1870s, and even after the Atlantic & Pacific railroad came in 1882, everything for Jerome, for the workers, for mining, had to be freighted by wagon over rough country from Prescott or Ash Fork. Coke to fuel the smelter furnace was shipped from Wales around the world to San Francisco and then by train to Ash Fork. Copper matte was hauled to Ash Fork and put on a train for a refinery in New Jersey. Still, investors on the east coast reaped a profit.

Then, shortly after a railroad branch line reached Prescott in December 1886, passing within a rugged 25 miles of Jerome, the vein of copper ore seemed to run out and the United Verde shut down. As it happened, William A. Clark (1839-1925) with copper mines in Montana had been following the fortunes of the United Verde and purchased the mine in 1888, renewing exploration. As luck would have it, a huge body of rich ore was located deeper and farther down the gulch and the mine reopened in 1890. By 1894, the Santa Fe Railway had taken over the bankrupt A&P and built a new branch line to Prescott. The United Verde then laid rails that year from the Santa Fe, Prescott & Phoenix Railroad to Jerome, reducing shipping costs and bringing a wide range of goods to stores. As boom times blanketed the community with wealth, the tightly packed business district was swept again and again by fire.

Like many early towns quickly constructed of cheap wood-frame buildings, Jerome was wiped out by devastating fires in 1894, 1897, 1898 and 1899. Fire resistant construction and organization of a fire brigade kept succeeding blazes from destroying more than just a few buildings or single neighborhoods in 1900, 1902, 1907, 1911, 1917, 1918, 1919, 1926 and 1927. In this view a crowd of concerned residents watch the fire of June 6, 1918 that burned 60 structures in the Hispanic neighborhood, leaving 1,000 people homeless.

In 1897 fire started underground in the mine. The copper came in the form of a combustible sulfide ore. Unable to stop the smoldering, miners walled off the burning rock and continued to drill and dig in almost unbearably hot conditions, hoping runoff from summer rains reaching the hot rock would not cause too great a steam explosion. Only creating an open pit and digging out the burning ore eliminated the fire in the late 1920s.

Knowing they were making rich eastern investors even richer, miners asked for a shorter workday and better conditions. The first labor strike in 1902 halted production for several months. Bricklayers struck in 1904, then United Verde shut down in 1906 in order to avoid another strike. Layoffs came with the recession of 1907, but improved working conditions followed the election of progressive state legislators in 1912. Still, the buildup for war production in 1917 brought the worst labor strike yet. Pro-war patriots who supported company management rounded up seventy-five union workers and forcibly shipped them out of Jerome to Kingman that July, two days before the more famous deportation at Bisbee.

This photograph by Carlos Elmer about 1948, published and distributed as a postcard by Bob Petley, looks from the entrance of Jerome in the mouth of Hull Canyon across the Verde Valley toward the cliffs of the Mogollon Rim, with the snow-covered San Francisco Peaks on top of the Colorado Plateau about 50 miles away. At right, Highway 89A leaves the city limit along the Hogback, looping around Mingus Union High School. The school buildings have orange roofs and the smoke stacks of Clarkdale smelter, five miles below, can be seen above the roofs. The high school moved to Cottonwood in 1972.

This view showing most of the town about 1928 looks back from near the high school toward the vantage point on the hill behind the telephone pole used by Carlos Elmer to make the photograph above. The dirt road is Highway 79 (later renumbered 89A) connecting Jerome with Clarkdale, Cottonwood and Sedona. The “J” is on Cleopatra Hill and the United Verde open pit is located just to the right. The Little Daisy mine is farther to the right, out of view. This postcard was published by MacDonald the druggist in Jerome, colorized and printed by CT American Art.

Jerome and its copper mines grew and prospered for forty years, quickly recovering following three recessions. The United Verde was making a million dollars a month as early as 1895. Population in town ballooned from 500 in 1893, a recession year, to nearly 3,000 by the 1900 census and then fell back a few hundred by 1910 after the recession of 1907. United Verde employment rose from 800 in 1900 to more than a thousand six years later. But the underground fire and an inefficient smelter were threatening profits. So in 1911 the United Verde selected a new smelter site down in the valley below Jerome and began open pit mining with huge steam shovels on the site of the old smelter.

Verde Tunnel & Smelter R.R. was the only short line in the US to operate huge Mallet compound 2-6-6-2 locomotives. They were needed to economically negotiate the steep grade between Jerome and Clarkdale. Here Mallet No. 500 is working in the open pit just below the surface plant near the north side of Cleopatra Hill around 1920. The mines were served by several railroads over the years. First came the United Verde & Pacific Railway, a 3-foot narrow gauge line built 26 miles from the Santa Fe, Prescott & Phoenix in Chino Valley beginning in 1894. It ceased operations in 1920 after the standard gauge Verde Valley Railroad began operations in 1911 between the Santa Fe at Drake and the new town of Clarkdale below Jerome. In 1912, the Verde Tunnel & Smelter Railroad was run 11 miles from Clarkdale to Jerome. It delivered supplies to Jerome and hauled ore from Hopewell to Clarkdale. The United Verde Copper Company Railway operated trains in the open pit and around the shops at Jerome. Steam shovels also moved on these rails. Then in 1922 the Arizona-Extension Railway was built from the United Verde Extension mine haulage tunnel to another smelter at Clemenceau (now inside Cottonwood).

At the beginning of the twentieth century, steam shovels made possible the moving of large amounts of dirt quicker and at lower cost than horse-drawn Fresno scrapers. Beginning in 1918, steam shovels excavated an open pit mine to supplement the United Verde underground workings. In this view from about 1920, the shovel (probably an Osgood 120 model) is loading side-dump cars pulled by a small VT&SRR Rogers 0-4-0 engine to ore chutes in the floor of the open pit. The chutes dumped the ore into rail cars in the Hopewell haulage tunnel under the pit.

Speculative prospecting all around the United Verde ore body over the years found no other large and equally rich deposits, leading most engineers to judge the mine unique. But James S. Douglas, whose father built up the Phelps Dodge operation at Bisbee and had explored the Jerome ore body in 1880, doubted the experts. He bought the Little Daisy mine in Bitter Creek gulch just below the United Verde. And there, in 1914, his prospectors located another rich ore body, even more fabulous than the United Verde. It became the United Verde Extension mine (UVX) and produced $9.9 million in two years, of which $7.4 million was profit. Only four mines produced almost all the wealth taken out of the Black Hills. By far the largest were the UV and the UVX.

The Little Daisy mine is located on the north side of Bitter Creek (the deep gulch in the foreground) at the base of Sunshine Hill. A United Verde and Pacific train is rounding the hill headed for Jerome station. This postcard was probably issued around the time the railroad ceased operations in 1920. The Little Daisy Hotel is the big building on the hill.

Between 1888 and 1922, the United Verde produced 1.1 billion pounds of copper, more than 563,000 ounces of gold and 18.4 million ounces of silver. Revenue during those years amounted to more than $167 million. In 1924, labor costs to produce a pound of copper amounted to less than 3 cents. All other costs, including 2 cents in taxes, amounted to nearly 9 cents a pound. Copper was selling for 13 cents a pound that year, leaving about a penny for profit. Still, stockholders received $3.3 million in dividends in 1924. When the price of copper was highest in 1918, stockholders were paid $5.6 million.

That kind of wealth required hard work and sacrifice. Due to the underground fire, engineers had to devise an air cooling system to drop the temperature in drill holes low enough to permit safe tamping of blasting powder in the open pit. As steam shovels reached the smoldering ore, they scooped it up into dump trucks, which had recently replaced rail cars for transport. The steam shovel bucket and dump beds often glowed a dark red from the heat. One day in 1926 the largest steam shovel in the world, working in the open pit, sliced into an old unexploded dynamite charge left underground. The resulting explosion completely wrecked the machine, killed two operators and injured two more.

In 1920, a recession year, the Arizona highway department put men to work turning the old wagon road across Mingus Mountain from Jerome to Prescott into a modern, though dirt, automobile highway. It would later be numbered Arizona 79 and then US 89A. This 1925 postcard by Curt Teich says “Yaeger Canyon” but it looks like Hull Canyon, the last pass before coming out into the Verde Valley at Jerome City Limit. Yaeger Canyon is the last pass going the other way before dropping down into Prescott Valley.

Each blast underground or in the pit shook the ground hollowed out by years of tunneling. The brick assay office was swallowed up by a collapsing stope in 1899 with loss of three lives. After heavy blasting in 1925 many buildings in Jerome began sliding downhill an inch a month. In 1928, a whole block of business buildings collapsed as the ground underneath gave way. As the open pit deepened, in 1929 the sheer northern wall began sending boulders crashing to the bottom. Engineers placed markers on the rim high above and took daily measures of subsidence. They predicted a large mass of fractured rock would give way in March 1931. Economic depression had curtailed mining by then and the work area was easily evacuated in advance. Sure enough, with a big roar and clouds of dust, a million tons of rock slid into the open pit.

All the while the Clarkdale and Clemenceau smokestacks belched out their sulfurous fumes. Farmers in the Verde Valley claimed crop damage and sued. Investigators found damage to pine trees far away on the Mogollon Rim below Williams. Damage payments were made and the smelters kept operating.

Earlier, government took to cleaning up sin and vice in Jerome. When the town was incorporated in 1899, an ordinance limited the number of saloons to a dozen. The number was reduced to eight in 1911. Presumably the fewer number just did a bigger business. Town government outlawed gambling in 1906 but the ordinance was quickly overturned by the courts. The following year, the territorial legislature outlawed gambling and barred women from saloons as a way to discourage prostitution. Jerome had a thriving red-light district, even though the town council had outlawed women working in saloons in 1905. Open prostitution finally ended across the nation in 1917 as a federal war measure requested by the military.

This is the busy east side of Main Street about 1919. Yavapai Drug Store had recently taken over the building constructed in 1899 for The Fashion saloon. Prohibition of alcohol began in Arizona January 1, 1915, replacing some bars with ice cream and soda pop fountains. Soda became popular in the 1880s as a temperance drink and a healthier alternative to drug store bitters and elixirs. At first, colas were promoted for medicinal purposes, but by the twentieth century they were largely considered refreshments. In any case, The Fashion, on the corner of Main and Jerome Avenue, became an appropriate place for the little girl on the sidewalk.

The same corner is seen here about 1965. In 1953 the Jerome Mine Museum opened in The Fashion building. Across Jerome Avenue is the Connor Hotel (1898) and the Liberty Theater building. Next door to the Mine Museum the building that once housed Fisher’s Bar again serves beer as Paul’s Place. Then comes the Laura Williams Antique Museum where there used to be a barber shop.

The fourth recession was harder and longer than the others. United Verde underground and open pit mining ceased in 1931. UVX reduced production. Work in the pit resumed in 1935 and underground on a smaller scale in 1937. As the Great Depression finally eased another world war loomed and the end was in sight for Jerome. Engineers had located the bottom of the ore bodies in the UV and UVX mines. United Verde underground mining continued but the open pit played out by 1940. The UV Extension was dissolved in 1938 and the United Verde, which had been purchased by Phelps Dodge in 1935, ceased mining and smelter operations in 1953. The population of Jerome, which some say had reached an unofficial 15,000 by 1927, had dropped to 2,295 in 1940 and 1,233 by 1950. Those who could moved on. Many Hispanics, who once represented half the labor force, had to stay. Still, the population dropped to 243 by 1960. A few artists came and the old copper camp was billed a “ghost town” to attract tourism. Trees began to grow again. By 2009 Jerome had become a nice place to visit and live. Cafes, inns, boutiques and more than 30 galleries and studios occupy restored historic structures. But now, will hard times return?

Something about the setting of Jerome has long inspired artists. I think many were attracted to the decay of the ramshackle structures in need of repair, sort of like the nostalgia attached to ancient Greek and Roman ruins. Some saw beauty in all the chaos. And then there is the 50-mile view. Kay Henson Manley produced this drawing during the time when Jerome was being reborn as an artists’ colony. I know nothing about Manley other than she was connected earlier with the prominent Thomas H. Bate photography studio in Prescott.

some sources:
E. M. J. Alenius, A Brief History of the United Verde Open Pit, Jerome, Arizona Univ. of Ariz., Arizona Bureau of Mines Bulletin 178 (1968)

Art Clark & Richard Snodgrass, Ballad of a Laughing Mountain (1957)

Waldemar Lindgren, Ore Deposits of the Jerome and Bradshaw Mountains Quadrangles, Arizona USGS Bulletin 782 (1928)

Russell Wahmann, Verde Valley Railroads (1983)

Herbert V. Young, They Came to Jerome (1972)

The Lost Dutchman Wasn’t Dutch

Jacob Waltz, also called Walzer or Walz, was deutsch, meaning “German.” But that word when pronounced sounds a lot like “Dutch.” So he became known as the Dutchman. After all, Americans more than a hundred years ago seemed to have a more genial attitude toward the Dutch, who were an object of humor, than the Germans, who were thought too gothic. It just goes to show you how little we know about the man and his “lost mine” in the Superstitions.

The Superstition Mountains are dramatic at first sight. The massive hulk of barren rock brooding over the Salt River Valley east of Apache Junction guards a vast region of uninhabitable wilderness, broken by rugged canyons and insurmountable peaks and spires. The mountains were named when Pima and Maricopa Indians told early Europeans that the area harbored evil and only bad things came to those who ventured among the tumbled stones. That was believable when Apaches controlled the area. But long after they were driven to a reservation adventurers still disappeared or were found murdered in the mountains. After so many years the Supes still elicit feelings of fascination mixed with fear.

Fixation on Superstition Mountain began with the discovery of gold nuggets, but the only gold evident in this view are the sun gilded tops of cholla cactus. The photographer in the late 1940s or early fifties manipulated the color very well to capture the drama surrounding the barren rocks. Most people consider the isolated mountain shown here the western-most portion of an entire range by the same name extending far to the east. The Superstitions can also be considered the western limit of the Pinal Mountain range south of Globe.

Miguel Peralta and his family were the first on record to bring Apache gold out of the Superstitions. That is, if their La Sombrera Butte of 1845-1848, lurking over their diggings, is the same as what is now called Weavers Needle. The location of the butte described as shaped like a Mexican hat is a matter of dispute, just like everything else about the Dutchman’s gold. That gold was taken out of the Superstitions, however, is not in dispute.

During the Civil War, when US troops were withdrawn from the southwest to fight elsewhere, soldiers from the Confederate States set up camp in Tucson to protect Americans from Apache raids. After an undersized contingent of union troops returned, King Woolsey (1832-1879) who had come to Arizona from Alabama organized a private militia to track down Apache raiders. In 1864, he led at least three punitive expeditions. Both supportive and critical accounts of those forays exist, conflicting on many points of fact. It was said that he tricked Apaches into eating poison food and on another occasion opened fire on Apache warriors summoned to peace talks. The latter incident, known as the Bloody Tanks massacre, probably took place in the Superstition Mountains. Was Woolsey also looking for gold? In any case, he received a commendation from the territorial government for his efforts, was elected to the legislature, made commander of the territorial militia and went on to help form the Democratic Party in Arizona.

To Native Americans white men always seemed to lose all reason and discretion when it came to gold.

In 1871, after a prospector reported finding gold near a butte that looked like a Mexican hat, “the greatest treasure hunt in the southwest since the days of the Spanish conquistadors. . .was organized. Territorial Governor A. P. K. Safford, a pioneer of Nevada’s Comstock Lode days, set aside his official duties to lead the expedition” (p. 365, Arizona, American Guide Series, 1940). They found no gold and missed the silver that would be discovered a few years later near Globe. They did notice quite a few mountains resembling hats, but it was like searching for Weaver’s Needle in a haystack. Now there is a Sombrero Peak in the Sierra Ancha Mts. NW of the Salt River Canyon in Gila County and a Sombrero Butte in the Galiuro Mts. east of Mammoth in Pinal County.

This booklet issued in October 1940 in Phoenix is only one of hundreds of pamphlets, maps and books published over the years promising treasure to those who brave the Superstitions. Barry Storm (a.k.a. John Clemenson) went on to publish a popular book about the Dutchman story, Thunder God’s Gold, which was made into a movie called Lust for Gold in 1949 starring Glenn Ford and Ida Lupino.

A newspaper article that appeared across the country in 1940 suggested a lost Spanish gold mine discovered in Needle Canyon may have been the source of wealth for both the Peraltas and the Dutchman. (Click on article to see full size.)

Though Jacob Waltz lived in Prescott in 1864 and Wickenburg in 1875, there is no evidence that he joined either the Woolsey or Safford expeditions. But in 1884, he filed a claim in the Superstitions and became well known in Phoenix for spending money derived from gold nuggets. “His mine had become the byword of all the local inhabitants of Phoenix and the nearby towns and villages by his tales and stories of it’s enormous wealth, years before his death. He proved his stories by producing gold in large quantities. His quick trips to the mountain, his return, loaded down with gold. . .kept the downtown inhabitants of Florence and Phoenix in a frenzy and the hangers-on of the Washington Street saloons pried him with questions and watched his every move” (p. 19, Barney Barnard, The Story of Jacob Walzer, 1954; a booklet actually written by Charles F. Higham and issued in more than 21 editions over the years).

After leading annual hikes into the Superstitions, the Dons Club of Phoenix built this monument in Apache Junction in 1938 at the intersection of State Route 88 and old US 60. Recently, a hotel that blocked the view of the mountain from the monument for many years was torn down after the business failed. The original plaque on the base used to read: “Here lies the remains of Snow Beard, the Dutchman who in this mountain shot three men to steal a rich gold mine from Spanish pioneers, killed eight men more to hold its treasure, then died in 1892 [he died October 25, 1891], without revealing its location. Dozens of searchers have met mysterious deaths in the canyons there, yet the ore lies unrevealed. Indians say this is the curse of the thunder god on white men in whom the craving for gold is strong. Beware lest you too succumb to the lure of the Lost Dutchman Mine in the Superstition Mountains.”

It’s probably true that some who followed Waltz into the mountains too close, didn’t return. According to one account, “this cold-blooded character was an ideal type for a real-life murder mystery. For the record, he killed upwards of a dozen men to gain and hold his treasure, one being his nephew, whose conduct failed to please the old man. Others faced his gun in ill-judged turns too close on his trail” (p. 46, Howard D. Clark, Lost Mines of the Old West, 1946). In 1891, Waltz got caught in the big Salt River flood in Phoenix, developed pneumonia and died about seven months later. But not before, on his deathbed, he gave his friends clues to find his cache. It’s across from a cave, near a stone house, in a gulch that runs north and south. You can see Weaver’s Needle from the cave.

Before Waltz’s death, four residents of Lehi, north of Mesa, began working a gold mine northwest of Superstition Mountain. More claims were filed in 1890 and a low-grade but profitable deposit was mined at what was now called Goldfield. A boom town developed with a post office that opened in 1895. The mine was productive until 1912 and then reworked 1950-1952. Some have argued that the Goldfield vein was the source of Waltz’s riches. Others continue to search till their last breath. Twenty adventurers died in the Superstitions from exposure, accident, gunshot wounds or unknown causes up to 1948. A few actually came out with gold, $18,000 reportedly in 1914. The Lost Dutchman became such a tourist draw that the Phoenix Don’s Club used to lead annual hikes into the Superstitions beginning in 1934.

So what is the secret? Is the Dutchman’s mine still lost? Or is it just profitable to continue to think so? Longtime Apache Junction resident and newspaper columnist Tom Kollenbom has probably made the most prudent observation, that the beautiful plant and animal life among the colorful stones in the Superstition Wilderness is more valuable than gold.

Several motels and restaurants in Apache Junction and Mesa have capitalized on the Dutchman legend over the years. State Route 87, or Country Club Road in Mesa, was the main highway to Tucson when this postcard was issued about 1947. The address at 560 South Mesa Blvd. (now called Country Club) locates the motel two blocks south of Broadway Avenue. The back of the postcard describes “a new 28 unit elegantly and completely furnished, insulated, air-conditioned, fire-proof Lodge. All tile kitchenettes and bath. Furnace heat. You will ‘really’ feel at home in Mesa’s Largest and Most Modern, Secluded Guest Lodge.” And then leave a place like that for a hike in the Superstitions? The motel is still in business as Lost Dutchman Comfort Lodge.

Contrast this view of a thinly covered, sun-baked desert, published by the L. L. Cook company of Milwaukee in 1939, with the thick vegetation nearby pictured above about 1949. It’s possible the two views document the difference between Sonoran desert growth on a floodplain versus higher ground, or a difference in climate. A long period of drought ended shortly after 1939 while 1949 fell in the middle of a short wet period. Much of the open space seen in both photos is now built over by housing subdivisions and strip malls. (The blue mountain Kodachrome was color enhanced on the original postcard, while I have yellowed the black & white “real photo postcard” by L. L. Cook.)

There is a tremendous amount of really fascinating information available on the Superstitions and the search for the lost mine. Start at http://lost-dutchman.com and http://www.superstitionmountain.info or http://ajpl.org (Apache Junction Public Library). Hint: copy and paste the web address into your browser to go there.

For some recent history see: Apache Junction and Superstition Mountains by Jane Eppinga (2006) and The Lost Dutchman Mine of Jacob Waltz: The Holmes Manuscript by Thomas E. Glover (2000).

Goldfield Ghost Town museum is located 4.5 miles NE of Apache Junction on the Apache Trail (State Route 88), and Superstition Mountain Museum is at 4087 North Apache Trail. Lost Dutchman State Park on the Apache Trail 5 miles north of Apache Junction, scheduled to close June 3, 2010 due to budget cuts, was created in 1977 from a US Bureau of Land Management recreation site developed in 1972.

Indian Hot Springs Was Really Hot
Among the hot spring resorts of Arizona, Indian Hot Springs on the north side of the Gila River five miles north of Pima in the wide Gila Valley of Graham County, has always been a popular destination. As the name implies, the steaming waters with curative powers had long been open to free access by indigenous families. But when those families were confined to reservations in the 1870s, that opened the springs to commercial development. Ben Gardner channeled the flow and diverted water into pools soon after Ft. Thomas was established by the military about six miles west in 1876. From then on the hot springs were sold as commercial property every few years or so and each successive owner added improvements.

The Honeymoon Trail from Utah brought Mormon families to the Gila Valley, some of whom formed the town of Eden in 1880 two and a half miles south of the hot springs. By the end of the 1890s, the Gila Valley, Globe and Northern Railway had been built along the Gila River, providing convenient transportation to Indian Hot Springs from the depot at Pima. In 1903 construction was completed on a three-story hotel at the hot springs described by one visitor as “a feudal castle lost in the desert.” In 1905, the largest swimming pool in Arizona, measuring 255 by 70 feet, was added and then enlarged to 270 feet and cemented after 1916.

This advertisement appeared in the Bisbee Daily Review August 31, 1910, with a drawing of the “hotel and sanitarium.” At that time Bisbee residents could easily reach the hot springs by rail. (Click on pictures to see full size) There are a lot of typos in the text. “Dropsy” is the archaic term for general edema, usually from a weak heart. Notice promotion of the dual role of health or pleasure.

Indian Hot Springs was now a therapeutic and recreational site for those who could pay admission. By 1912 that included local families with modest incomes, along with those who could afford to take the train or drive their automobile. The resort was only a short distance off the major cross-country highway, US 70. “The famous health and pleasure resort” advertised its 1.5 million gallons of daily flow into pools, tubs and mud baths as a cure for rheumatism. There were four water temperatures available, Magnesium Springs at 81 degrees, Iron and Mud Springs at 116 degrees, Rock Springs at 118 and Beauty Springs one degree hotter. (For more supposed health benefits see: Resources of Graham County compiled by J. H. Vaughn (1888) pp. 15-16.)

Burton Frasher (1888-1955), who operated a postcard business headquartered in Pomona California, published a series of “real photo” cards of Indian Hot Springs in 1936. The photographs appear to have been taken a few years earlier. Fortunately the Frasher family and the Pomona Public Library have made hundreds of “Frashers Fotos” public domain images available on the internet. The amazingly sharp and beautiful black and white photos clearly document much of Arizona from 1930 to 1955.

I haven’t been to the site, and I’m not sure where you would actually immerse yourself in the hot water or have a mud bath. Probably inside, though the hot springs I’ve visited always had outdoor pools. Three “Roman baths” were built at the site in 1903. A big part of the experience is the mental relaxation. There was a resurgence of the hot springs spirit in the hippie movement of the sixties and that was evident at Indian Hot Springs too.

Frasher gives the older dimensions for the biggest swimming pool in the southwest. Local sources say it was enlarged to 270 feet long shortly after 1916.

In the early days this pond offered romantic rowboat outings. Apparently it was stocked with goldfish when this photo was snapped. The Arizona Bureau of Geology and Mineral Technology has identified 45 hot and warm springs in Arizona, with a concentration in Graham and Greenlee counties. (James C. Witcher, “Thermal Springs of Arizona,” Field Notes, June 1981).

The hot spring experience was mostly a Native American and European tradition. What we call a spa today is an entirely different affair. By the 1960s, business at Indian Hot Springs had declined and the latest owners of the property were more interested in farming the acreage. Without commercial value, the beautiful grounds were opened up again for free use by local families. But much would be lost. Around 1966 the health department closed the pool, judging that un-chlorinated water was not fit for swimming. Now the ornate Victorian hotel was even more out of place. When built, the brick and stone building had been advertised as fireproof, but fire of unknown origin broke out in the wooden interior February 24, 2008, completely wrecking the entire structure.

This fine structure replaced canvas “cottage tents,” an adobe building and a small wood house available for up to 60 guests before 1903. By 2008 the 30-room hotel was still being rented to guests, according to a newspaper account, and caught fire after a group left.

See also:
“Eden mansion burns down,” Eastern Arizona Courier 2/27/08
“Burned resort full of history” Eastern Arizona Courier 3/4/08

ABC Arizona Communities

All Roads Lead to Holbrook

A few years ago the Holbrook Chamber of Commerce declared their community “headed in the right direction.” Though it hasn’t always been true, it has been that way for a long time. In fact, Holbrook has also been a place to which people are headed. The Santa Fe Stage Company established passenger and mail service in 1867 from Santa Fe to Los Angeles along the middle route, which meant across northern Arizona Territory. The stage found a convenient crossing of the Little Colorado River where it is joined by the Rio Puerco, and within a year or so Juan Padilla and Berado Frayde from New Mexico built a stage station with a store, restaurant and hotel at that point, calling it Horsehead Crossing. After Camp Apache was located in the White Mountains in 1870 General George Stoneman had a supply road built from the military outpost to Horsehead Crossing. And beginning in 1876 the Mormon immigrant trail from Utah, known as the Honeymoon Trail, used the same crossing for wagon trains going to all of eastern Arizona.

This map is a reconstruction published in 1943 of the trails that led to Horsehead Crossing in the first decade following the establishment of the Territory of Arizona. It doesn’t show General Stoneman’s road, nor does it continue the Mormon trail. The headquarters of the Hashknife outfit, established about 1883 or 1884 is shown, and the Star Mail Route taken by the stage line and the first territorial governor’s party.

By 1880, the stage had stopped running but the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad was building into Arizona from Albuquerque. Grading contractor John W. Young had recently purchased the stage station knowing it was on the surveyed railroad line. But Young was disappointed when the railroad arrived in 1881 and picked a location for a depot where the valley was wider, about two miles west of Horsehead Crossing. Still he suggested naming the place after the railroad’s chief engineer, Henry R. Holbrook. Within a few years the new town would become the principal shipping point and center of commerce in eastern Arizona. By then no one could recall why it’s former location was named Horsehead Crossing. The steep bluffs bordering the two rivers probably reminded travelers of the more famous Horsehead Crossing, on the Pecos River in Texas.

This photo from the National Archives and Records Administration documents the center of the single business street, rebuilding after the fire of 1888. The photographer is standing at the railroad main line with the foundation of the burned depot and a rail spur in the foreground. At right, along Front Street, is the A & B Schuster General Merchandise store and the Mormon Arizona Cooperative Mercantile Institution relocated from nearby Woodruff and Horsehead Crossing before that. The storefront with the sign at left is F. J. Wattron’s Drugs & Notions. Next door to the left is the Cottage Saloon, nicknamed “Bucket of Blood” after the infamous saloon in Virginia City, Nevada. Gambling and booze too often resulted in gunfights. Today, Front Street is named Bucket of Blood Street.

Commodity speculators from the east coast and Texas had driven a boom in the cattle industry in that state which went bust in 1885. They turned to northeastern Arizona to try again. The Aztec Land and Cattle Company was formed with about a million acres of cheap railroad land grant. Ranch headquarters was located a short distance southwest of Holbrook. From 1884-1887, nearly 40,000 longhorns, 100 cowboys and more than 2,500 horses were shipped to Holbrook. Having grown to 60,000 head within a few years, it was the third biggest ranch in North America. And though it only lasted 16 years, it wielded tremendous power in northeastern Arizona, altering settlement there forever, where its legacy is still evident. Called The Hashknife outfit, after its brand which resembled the tool favored by chuck wagon cooks, the beef and land development company owned alternate sections, giving it de facto control over about two million acres. Armed cowboys sternly enforced a policy of excluding homesteaders and warning trespassers. Mormons who had settled from 1876-1878, before government surveys, found their land claims in jeopardy. Sheep ranchers already grazing flocks in the area were considered a threat.

Freight wagons piled high with sacks of wool arrive at the depot around 1906. The row of storefronts pictured in the 1889 photo (above) are located just out of view at left. The railroad shipped 300,000 pounds of wool from Holbrook in the first year of the town’s existence. By 1896 the freight depot handled 1.1 million pounds of wool, 20,000 head of cattle and 22,000 head of sheep.

In Holbrook, the line of saloons between the tracks and the river supported at first by railroad worker paychecks now served a hard-working, hard-drinking, quick shooting bunch of cowboys. It wasn’t long before the town seemed headed in the wrong direction, with a violent reputation to rival the other wild west towns along the A & P. In 1887, Sheriff Commodore Perry Owens became a legendary figure after calmly walking Holbrook’s main street with his over-the-shoulder hair wafting on the breeze. After reaching the house where the Blevins gang, wanted by the law, was hold up, Owen’s Winchester pierced the walls to leave three dead, including a 16-year-old. Some who read newspaper accounts worried that Holbrook and Tombstone could tarnish the whole territory, dampening business investment and chances for statehood. Owens was not reelected in 1888. Still, Holbrook maintained a reputation for over-the-top lawlessness and tough law enforcement for more than another decade. In 1899, Navajo County Sheriff F. J. Wattron was criticized by the President of the United States for issuing a too gleeful invitation to a hanging. It turned out to be the only hanging to ever take place in Holbrook.

Apache county had been created out of the eastern part of Yavapai County in 1879 by powerful mercantile and sheep interests centered in St. Johns, which became county seat. But as Winslow and Holbrook blossomed with the railroad there was a struggle to wrestle the county seat away from St. Johns. Finally, Navajo County was created out of the west half of Apache County by the territorial legislature in 1895 and Holbrook narrowly beat Winslow to become county seat.

This 1912 panorama looking west shows how the railroad ran down the center of the main business street. There’s a locomotive puffing smoke in the distance. In the 1880s there were only a few scattered homes on the north side of the tracks (on the right in this view) and no business buildings. The residential neighborhood was first located among the cottonwoods that lined the river, seen at left. The Navajo County Courthouse (1898) is seen at extreme right, built on higher ground. Floods would soon drive the residential and business districts in that direction.

Several years of drought followed by the severe winter of 1898 killed half of the cattle grazing the Hashknife range and the beef industry collapsed just as it had in Texas. Aztec Land and Cattle filed for bankruptcy in 1900 and Holbook entered a period of relative tranquility. Now calamity visited the community only in the form of periodic disasters. The big fire of 1888 was followed by flood in 1891. Drought and overgrazing by sheep and cattle produced more silt in the Rio Puerco and Little Colorado until the stream bed was higher than parts of town. The flood of 1923 was the worst ever, cutting off Holbrook by rail, highway, telephone and telegraph. Streets were inundated, homes and commercial buildings washed away and one life lost. Beginning in the 1930s the US Army Corps of Engineers constructed levees to protect those homes and businesses that remained on the south side of the tracks. Work on the levees continues today.

One of the earlier motels catering to travelers on Route 66 is pictured about 1931. The back of this postcard says “a large assortment of genuine Navajo Indian rugs in stock at all times.” Though it doesn’t look very inviting today it seemed to offer most everything you could want, including a good mattress.

With the development of automobile travel, Holbrook businesses came to line two main streets, Navajo Boulevard seen here looking north in 1937 and Hopi Drive running west and east one block north of this view. Joy Nevin Avenue and the railroad tracks are just behind the photographer of this “real photo postcard,” the prolific Burton Frasher (1888-1955) of Pomona, California. The left side of this block is hard to recognize today, taken over by giant plaster dinosaurs advertising a rock shop. The white house that was home to Scorse’s Green Lantern Café in 1937 is still there, but the Holbrook Hotel built in 1884 and housing a Buick-Oldsmobile dealership in 1937 is long gone.

Holbrook’s fortunes increased with every new road bringing tourists and shoppers. Trains stopped at Adamana, 15 miles east of Holbrook, for tours of Petrified Forest National Monument created in 1906. It wasn’t long before tours of the Painted Desert, Petrified Forest and the Hopi pueblos would start in Holbrook. Beginning in 1913, an Ocean to Ocean highway was constructed across the country, named the National Old Trails Road. Coming from California, the automobile road followed the Santa Fe railway until Holbrook. There it crossed the Little Colorado River twice to go south to St. Johns and Springerville and into New Mexico. When named highways were given numbers in 1926, US Highway 66 from Winslow took a new alignment at Holbrook, staying north of the Rio Puerco.

Judging by the number of cars, The Motaurant was a popular stop on west Highway 66, Hopi Drive in Holbrook when this postcard was issued late in 1953 or early 1954. Not a complete octagon, the café wing was nevertheless built to resemble one of the better Navajo hogan homes. Another postcard for The Motaurant from the late 1940s advertised organist Fred Laskowsky playing your requests in the “refined cocktail bar” at left. Drinks and then back on narrow, two-lane Route 66 at 50-65 mph.

“Sleep in a Wigwam” said the back of this Petley Studios postcard from the 1950s, “a novel and unique place to stay.” Built in 1950 by Chester E. Lewis based on a design used for six other such motels from California to Florida, it was first called Wigwam Village No. 6. Though closed from 1974-1988 when I-40 bypassed the downtown, today it is still operated by the Lewis family. Besides the seven Villages, there were other teepee design motels, including one in Tempe.

In 1917, Holbrook became the terminus of a new railroad, the Apache Railway extending south to sawmills at Snowflake, Standard and McNary. Lumber became a commodity shipped out of Holbrook. Today, the Apache Railway brings paper from a mill near Snowflake. Over the years, Holbrook has also been a supply point by truck for the Hopi mesas to the north and the Mormon settlements to the south, along Highway 77. Highway 377 also comes in from the south, from Heber and the rim country. But it was Route 66 that created one long strip development through downtown Holbrook, offering travelers a variety of gasoline stations, restaurants, motels, curio shops and amusements. That’s the town that still greets motorists on Interstate-40.

This is the intersection of Hopi Drive and Navajo Boulevard, looking northeast about 1952. The cupola of the courthouse is seen above the yellow-brick Masonic Lodge (1917). Motorists on Route 66 headed east would drive the length of Hopi until arriving at this intersection at lower left, then turn left to proceed north on Navajo, passing the courthouse. If they turned right, they would pass the scene pictured above in 1937, cross the railroad tracks and the river with the option to head south toward Snowflake (Highway 77) or southeast toward St. Johns (US 260 in 1952 but renumbered 180 today).

This 1960s Agfachrome aerial photo by Bob Petley locates Holbrook between the Little Colorado River at lower right corner and the reddish bluffs bordering the river valley. You can easily make out the Wigwam Motel on long and wide Hopi Drive (click on the picture to see full-size) and the Santa Fe railroad running parallel one block south. In upper left, Navajo Boulevard has climbed out of the valley to curve back to the east as Route 66, going to the Petrified Forest on the horizon.

see also:
William S. Abruzzi, “The Social and Ecological Consequences of Early Cattle Ranching in the Little Colorado River Basin” Human Ecology, Vol. 23, No. 1 (March 1995) pp. 75-98.
Catherine H. Ellis, Holbrook and the Petrified Forest (2007).

Globe: The Greatest Copper Camp
Survived Without Copper

Searching for gold, prospectors found silver instead, in the rugged mountains south of the Salt River canyon in the early 1870s. Within a few years, Globe City would be built along Pinal creek, in a small valley between the Pinal Mountains on the southwest and the Apache Mountains on the northeast. Globe would be the business center of a “mineral belt” in Cobre Valley, and then about six years later the county seat of newly created Gila County. When the silver played out, copper would bring even greater wealth. And after about 50 years of mining copper, after all the copper mines at Globe closed, the city would survive nevertheless.

The military, operating out of a western ring of forts had been determinately confining the Apache people to a reservation in the mountains of eastern Arizona created by executive order of President U. S. Grant November 9, 1871. This allowed prospectors into the Pinal and Apache Mountains where they found small globes of silver. One group of men filed a claim on the Globe Ledge discovery in 1873. This was followed by adjacent claims in 1874 and 1875. Whether impressed by the shape of the silver nuggets or more likely the world renown they were sure was to come, they named it the Globe Mining District in the Globe Hills with the streets of Globe City laid out down on the creek. When a survey was made, all this was found to be on Apache reservation land. No problem. Friends in Washington got the reservation boundary line moved east several times to accommodate each new discovery. Still, proximity to Apache lands has always played a role in the history of Globe.

This Apache family depicted about 1910, possibly camped near Globe, would have traveled there to trade at the stores. At first, the Department of Interior and the military tried to round up all Apache tribes in the southwest on the San Carlos reservation east of globe, with shrinking reservation boundaries every few years. Then, a policy change sent Apache families to five reservations across the state. (Postcards from this era were made from colorized black & white photos.)

I don’t know who owned this general store or where it was in Globe, but the photo appears to date from about 1907. It undoubtedly shows the staff, including two young boys in an express wagon who delivered groceries and probably a salesman in a buggy. The butcher is all in white, and since women rarely worked in a store unless they owned it, I assume that the owners are the lady and the well-dressed man to her left. The other four men and boys would be clerks and stock clerks. Then again, maybe the butcher was the owner. A lot of the details of history have been lost.

Riches poured out of the land. Hinton (1878) in his Handbook to Arizona reported that red oxide of copper ore could produce $200 to $400 a ton in silver even if the copper was discarded. Rich silver ores within a few miles of Globe were yielding 200 to 400 ounces per ton. To attract investors and labor, some mines claimed to extract $1,300 to $4,000 per ton of ore, and even “ores producing from $5,000 to $15,000 per ton,” were reported. Smelters and furnaces were profitably roasting rocks all along the mineral belt even though all supplies had to be transported to the remote area by wagon teams.

This view of the Old Dominion works about 1906 is looking approximately south toward the town of Globe in the valley at left with the snowcapped Pinal Mountains on the horizon. The head frame for the underground shaft is out of view at left. A recently added concentrator has five smoke stacks and a growing pile of waste in the right foreground. Behind is the big stack of the smelter. The correspondent who mailed this postcard in 1909 has written on the front, “Talk about your mining towns, Globe is sure one, believe me.” On the back he related, “I am now in a town where a person must be careful, truly a mining town. Being in Arizona on business and near Globe, I thought I would take a run up and see it. It is not on the main line but 124 mi. from it, 743 miles from L.A. Talk about being in the mountains, all surroundings are like the picture on the reverse side.” The William Ryan drugstore in Globe had the photo sent to Germany to be printed as postcards, which were then sold at the drugstore.

This is a scene inside the smelter pictured above about the same year. At the end of the mining, concentrating and smelting process pure molten copper is poured into molds to become ingots. Today, an electrolytic process produces pure copper cathodes.

The Southern Pacific railroad had built across the state to New Mexico by the end of 1880. Heavy mining machinery, furnace clay, lead catalyst and everything else needed in Globe could be transferred from relatively cheap railroad shipping to relatively expensive wagon train 130 miles from Globe. This arrangement lasted more than 15 years and still mining proved profitable, even during the mid-1880s recession. “In few places in the world is copper ore found in such manner and of so high a grade as in the vicinity of Globe,” wrote Arizona Commissioner of Immigration John A, Black in 1890. That kind of treasure deserves a rail link he concluded. (see, Black, Arizona, the land of sunshine and silver. . .) Several attempts had already been financial failures, but finally with mining company money, in 1894 the Gila Valley, Globe and Northern Railway was formed and tracks reached Globe four years later. The line would eventually became part of the Southern Pacific empire but is now operated again by a small company.

Though laborious hand drilling of blasting holes gave way to steam drills in the 1890s, hand drilling contests were popular events bringing out huge crowds for another couple decades. This is a Globe team in 1908. The little girl is ready with a water hose to cool and lubricate the bit and clear dust.

Globe Becomes a Hotbed of Labor Union Strife

Copper mining at Globe became increasingly profitable, leading workers to join unions and demand higher wages and better benefits. After a number of strikes, the Greatest Copper Camp finally suffered the greatest miners strike in 1917. When the United States entered the European war that year, patriotism reached a fever pitch. President Wilson criminalized speaking against the war effort and demanded greatly increased copper production for shell casings and electrical wiring in battleships. Globe was a multi-ethnic community with Hispanic workers paid less than union scale. Rumors spread through town that Austrian immigrants working in the mines were planning fifth-column sabotage on behalf of the Huns. Irish workers were also suspect. Hadn’t their country just kicked out British rulers through revolution? The unions were fractured between socialists like the Industrial Workers of the World who took a moral stand against warfare and moderates like the Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers Union. The Fourth of July holiday fell right in the middle of a desperate and extremely contentious walkout by 2,000 miners from both unions. The companies hired armed guards and the county sheriff deputized citizens. Republican Governor Thomas Campbell showed up with federal army troops since the National Guard had gone off to war. A Loyalty League recruited patriots to oppose the workers. There were mass arrests. Replacement workers were brought in from Texas, though they couldn’t get production going. It seemed chaos reigned for nearly four months, but in the end a compromise was found and most of the workers went back to work for higher pay and somewhat better benefits. Jurors refused to convict the only union leader brought to trial. Remarkably, with all the brandishing of loaded guns, only two deaths occurred, a train ran over a soldier and a horse kicked a federal conciliator. (see, James W. Byrkit, Forging the Copper Collar (1982); Daphne Overstreet, “The 1917 Walkout at Globe, Arizona,” Journal of Arizona History Summer 1977; and “The Arizona Copper Strike,” The Outlook 25 July 1917, pages 466, 468)

This Arizona Historical Society photo shows one of several poses for the camera made by the famous/infamous 14 armed guards at the Old Dominion smelter during the strike of 1917. Their pistol-packing leader is sitting down in front.

This truck was one of the entries in the Fourth of July parade at the beginning of the strike. It was labeled a “scab car,” so the men must be some of those brought in from New Mexico and Texas to cross picket lines.

In contrast to labor wars, Globe’s history has long been animated by genuinely violent stories of murders, holdups and hangings in the 1880s. When it wasn’t an Apache brought to the gallows, then it was a claim jumper, drunken cowboy or highway robbers masquerading as Apaches. Long after hangings at county jails were banned in 1909 and hanging was replaced by the gas chamber in 1933, Globe holds the distinction of claiming the last legal hanging in Arizona. It was a gruesome, botched strangulation of an Apache under the federal death penalty statute in 1936. (see, “Globe Arizona History” by Paul R. Machula [1996] at http://www.geocities.com/~zybt/globe.htm)

Despite the violence, despite its remote location and despite unstable copper prices the boomtown survived. It rebuilt after fires in 1885 and 1894. Earthquake damage in 1887 and periodic floods, the worst in 1891, couldn’t dampen profits for long. The 1880 census found Globe the seventh largest town in the territory. By 1890 it had dropped to tenth. After the railroad came it bounced up to fifth place in 1900 and fourth in 1910. Being county seat helped. Government jobs, taxes and appropriations have always kept some Arizona communities afloat, as others faded into ghost towns. Nearly half of all employment in Gila County in 2008 was in some level of government.

The town was built around a single main street, Broad Street, seen here about 1913. This is the block between Oak and Sycamore on the west side of Broad Street. At left is the Dominion Hotel, Globe’s finest when it was built in 1905. It’s now gone, having burned in 1981. Next is the office of Globe Light & Power Company which also piped gas into homes, and then Charles T. Martin’s theater. By 1940 the electric company had become part of Arizona Edison Company, next door to the renamed Fox theater.

Looking north at the east side of Broad Street about 1927 in the same block shown above, the Gila County Courthouse (1906) is on the corner with a flag on the roof, across Oak Street from the Hotel Globe. The other building with a flag, farther down the street, is the Trust or European Building (1906). The photo (colorized) was undoubtedly taken from a balcony on the Dominion Hotel. In the distance you can just see the Old Dominion smelter smoke stack. The courthouse, now Cobre Valley Center for the Arts, is still a point of pride. The Trust Building burned in 2005.


The opening of large mines at the new town of Miami from 1907 to 1911, a few miles away, benefited the county seat. Copper production from Globe-Miami mines surpassed Bisbee in 1916 and remained in the lead until the 1930s. But while other copper mines in Arizona shifted to open pit extraction, the Old Dominion remained an underground operation. Tunneling reached the aquifer in 1894 and pumps had to be installed, adding to the cost. By 1914, 3.8 million gallons of water had to be brought to the surface every day. With the coming of the Great Depression copper mines all over the state closed, including the Old Dominion in 1931. It never reopened. When copper prices rose again the workforce in Globe drove to Miami for high paid jobs.

Transportation spending brings prosperity for many Arizona communities. While Globe remained far from a railroad mainline it did end up on well-traveled highways. In 1905, Globe became a freight hauling point on the newly constructed Apache Trail, a dirt road from Mesa to Roosevelt Dam and on to Globe and Miami. Most of this freight would come from Mesa, but the Southern Pacific railroad began bringing tourists to Globe. There, they would board buses for a scenic ride over the Apache Trail, returning to the train in Mesa. When transcontinental highways were built and lined with gasoline stations and motels, Globe was a stop on the Lee Highway beginning in 1921. Later it would be numbered US Highway 180 and by 1938 renumbered Highway 70. Another highway, connecting Phoenix with Springerville, Highway 60, was routed through Globe in 1932.

Travel on Highway 70 led to a healthy food and lodging industry at Globe’s northeast entrance, from the junction with Highway 60 to the downtown. The common design of cabins with garages around a central court provided a bed for the night. They were called auto courts or motor hotels or by some variation. The El Rey (still in business) opened in 1938 and probably issued this card the same year. “One of Arizona’s finest,” said the back of the postcard, “recommended by Duncan Hines.”

These photos appear to have been taken when the new eatery opened in December 1938. There’s a sign on the covered wagon tarp that says, “Welcome! You’re in the West. It doesn’t matter how you’re dressed.”

The last few decades have been brutal for Arizona copper towns, finally leaving most of Globe and Miami out of work. Housing development peaked and investors turned to driving up metal prices. Just before the present economic depression, high copper prices looked to reopen the Miami mines. In 2007 the Arizona Republic reported, “Many of Miami's houses and commercial buildings were abandoned years ago and are crumbling and uninhabitable. Neither Miami nor Globe, four miles to the east, has enough dwellings to accommodate the new miners and their families. Miami's aging water and sewer systems can barely handle existing residents, and in Globe there is little private land available on which to build homes.” Nobody expected copper prices to go up so fast, explained the Miami Vice Mayor.