After leaving Tucson, we headed south for Bisbee. On the way, we stopped in Tombstone, site of the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral which only lasted about 30 seconds and didn’t really take place at the OK Corral. Reenactments now take place several times each day.
Bisbee is an old copper mining town. In its heyday, it was the largest town between Saint Louis and San Francisco; today it draws tourists and artists. It has a small Victorian town center and houses clinging to steep hills.
The campground overlooks the town on one side and Lavender Pit on the other. The latter is a former open pit copper mine that is 700 feet deep. For folks back home, Bisbee is very much like Jim Thorpe. Remove the copper mines and insert coal.
We toured the Copper Queen mine, an underground mine that operated until 1975. The tour guide was a miner who worked in this mine and others in Bisbee. He told some hair raising stories about mine operation and provided a great explanation of the various mining jobs. It seemed he’d spent time doing most of them.
