As I write this post I am riding the Sunset Express train from Tucson to LA after two fun and somewhat adventurous days in southeast Arizona. Part of my planning for this trip involved thinking about places that I have heard about but never visited and despite living in Arizona many years ago I have never been the mining towns in the southeastern part of the state or even to downtown Tucson, so I figured I'd get off of the train in Tucson, rent a car and drive around and to some of the more storied places in Arizona. After a great stay in The Hotel Congress which is a very nice, albeit small, very old hotel right across the street from the Amtrak station I headed southeast towards the towns of Bisbee, Tombstone and some of the lesser known 'old west' towns.
Tombstone was very quiet with just a handful of tourists milling in and out of the souvenir and western wear stores, saloons, and restaurants. Nothing in the stores really caught my eye but I did see a lot of good native American ceramics and a gunfight just outside of the OK Coral. I also met a few interesting characters at the Oriental Saloon and enjoyed hearing their stories of how they came to live in the Tombstone area. After an acceptable slice of '3 Berry' pie I headed to Bisbee and got to marvel at the landscape that is part of the attraction to the area.
Bisbee is home to the Copper Queen mine and many other mines. and they have set up a small segment of the Copper Queen mine to give tours and talk about the history of mining in Arizona. Bisbee is also a very cool little town and does not have the theatrical feeling that Tombstone has. It was neat to walk around but at the time i was there many of the stores were closed. The pretour of the mine was very cool with a lot of displays and interesting film on the history of the mine. For the tour they put you on to a small train where you ride down into the mine. The train goes into a several large areas where the mining operation removed a substantial part of the interior of the mine and you can see the large areas where they removed the ore and a demonstration of how they blasted the ore out of the wall at the end of every shift. One of the most interesting things I learned is that for some period of time they actually used mules to pull the ore carts around inside the mine. They trained them, somehow, for years to work the mines and then moved them down into the mines where they stayed for several years working to pull ore carts around. After several years of continuous underground service they would be finally brought back up and put out to pasture as a retired mine mule. I could relate.
Go get em James!
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