Bisbee, Arizona

Okay, so I'm backing up a couple of days again to catch you up on our trip to Bisbee, Arizona. I'd read about Bisbee, and it was one of the places I wanted to see from my Arizona folder. When we checked into the park at Kartchner Caverns, the camp host encouraged us to take the Copper Queen Mine Tour, and recommended we make reservations. The tours are popular, apparently, and fill up fast. So here we go.

Our first stop was at the Bisbee Mining and Historical Museum, which is affiliated with the Smithsonian Museum. These were the banners just outside.

It was hard to find a good angle from which to photograph the building itself. This was the best I could do.

Just in the foreground in that image above were various bits of mining trains and trolleys.

Inside, we got a look at Bisbee during its heyday of mining.

And I don't know about you, but I take an instant disliking to any museum that features items I used when I was in high school. Who remembers slide rules (Item E)? Yes, there was a time before calculators, and I was alive then. Sheesh.

But I knew you'd want to see this sewing machine. The point of this display was that women didn't work in the mines. Instead, they kept the home fires burning, cooked, sewed, gardened, and raised children.

Here's a closer look at the sewing machine...a Singer.

This was mainly a reading museum. There were lots of placards explaining lots of stuff with lots of pictures. This next display was kind of interesting. Did you ever wonder what happened if you broke a bone before plaster of paris came along? Wonder no more. You would have been fitted with a contraption similar to the one below.

These are some of the things they mined in Bisbee. Our tour was of a copper mine, but there were other minerals too, including lead, silver, hematite, and azurite.

As for copper, here are some fun facts.

I was sorry I couldn't find all ten of the miner's ten commandments, but the ones on display were funny enough.

Consulting my friend The Google, I found this printed copy of the Miner's Ten Commandments, courtesy of our own Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. It's hard to read, but I was interested to know a copy was in the library.

There was mining all around this area. I took the next two pictures mainly to give you some idea what it looked like inside Kartchner Caverns. Given the number of mines in the area, I have no doubt there are caves all over, just waiting to be discovered.

Below was a scale model of what it looked like in the interior.

When we'd finished exploring the museum, we walked up and down the main street of Bisbee. It was like stepping back into the early 1900's. Unlike Tombstone, where a modern version existed, this was pretty much the whole of Bisbee.

We just walked along window shopping. These next bits of art made me think of quilts.

Walking back the other direction, we could see the Bisbee "B" on the hillside above us.

Looking overhead, I wanted you to notice the structure high on the hill. The thing to know about this is that the town of Bisbee is nestled into what amounts to a deep wash. It seems as if flooding would be a problem in a big rain.

There was some pretty pottery. I love pottery, and so I kind of avoid doing anything other than window shopping. The last thing I need is more collections of more stuff, pretty or not.

This next building was the United State Post Office.

From there, we had some time to kill before our mine tour, and so we stopped off here for lunch.

Inside, the floor could have been cleaner, but I thought you'd enjoy seeing it anyway. It wasn't dirty so much as it was just old and aged...I know the feeling.

From there, we went to the visitor center where we toured the Copper Queen Mine. It was very interesting. There's no way I can remember everything we learned about the mine, and so I would encourage you to click on that link to read more about it.

It was called the "Queen" mine simply because it was the first opening in the hillside. Our tour guide explained they put the queen first. After that, there was also the King and the Prince mines. For the tour, we donned hard hats, vests, and lights.

These doors swung open, and we rode the train inside.

The "train" cars were about as uncomfortable as they possibly could have been. We had to straddle the seat. Where our seat was there was also a fender, which made it an extremely uncomfortable position for riding. You can see someone on the left side of the image below trying to negotiate a similar seat to what we had. We had our knees up to our chins to keep our feet out of the way.

Inside, we got a real feel for what it might have been like to be a miner in this particular mine. We rode back 700+ feet into the mountainside, and it was dark with the exception of just a few lights, and our own hand held lights.

At our first stop, we climbed these stairs.

It was hard to get any good pictures in here. I was shooting in the dark with my cell phone. In this next image, you can see a ladder that a miner would have used to climb up to the area where the brightest light is shining. There was a dummy up there, set up as if he were operating one of the drills used to drill holes for dynamite.

We were standing beside a structure similar to the one pictured below. My picture didn't turn out, but these wooden structures were built as each layer of rock was hauled out to stabilize and support the walls and avoid collapse.

Moving on to the next location, some 1,600 feet into the hillside, we learned about what it took to blast rock away and mine for copper and other minerals. Rocks were dumped into chutes and doors were opened to allow it to fall into these trolley buckets.

These doors were opened and rocks tumbled out.

Early on, men were used to push the trolleys to where they could be loaded onto trains and moved to the surface. Later, mules were put to work for this purpose. Our guide explained that the mules stayed under ground all the while they were working. After 4-5 years, their eyesight deteriorated, and they were then moved to the outside world again. Their eyes were covered and they were gradually reintroduced to sunlight. After that, they were adopted by local ranchers to live out the rest of their lives. It seemed harsh to keep them underground for years at a time, but I was glad to know the remainder of their lives were an improvement over the darkness of the mine.

In the next image is a "bicycle" the foremen used to get from one place to another. They used the same rails as the other mining equipment.

At this stop, we learned about the drills used to drill holes for dynamite. The first version of this tool was known as a "widow maker" because there was nothing to protect miners from silicalung, similar to black lung, but caused by the inhalation of the kinds of crystals being mined here, rather than coal.

Later versions used water to keep the dust down and improve working conditions for the miners who operated them. Either way, it would have deafening (literally) doing this work. The timbers in the image below are the same ones used when the mine was constructed, fir and pine imported from the northwest. On the back wall are a series of holes with fuses inserted. Twenty-five holes were drilled and 25 charges of dynamite set. With the lighting of the first fuse, each subsequent fuse was cut 1/4 inch longer. If memory serves, the fuses burned at the rate of about 1/4 inch per 40 seconds. When they were all lit, the miners moved to safer ground and then listened for all 25 charges to explode, counting them as they went. If any were missed, they were noted on a board and dealt with by a different shift.

We happened to be on level 3 of 7 levels in this mine.

In this next image, our guide was explaining that each level had a code. If there was an accident, the number and pattern of bells notified other workers of where the location was so that injured workers could be located and removed to safety.

This next image was as far back into the mine as we traveled. Here was where explosives were stored.

Here's the necessary room. And let me just say, no. Just no.

After that, we left the mine and headed back to our RV. It was a nice day and the mountains were beautiful.

And we've had a lovely day here at Picacho Peak as well. We were treated to a beautiful Sonora Desert sunset last night. I was actually trying for a different image from the one below. Smitty and I were out for a walk, when I noticed a starburst of sunlight shining through the left arm of the cactus. By the time I had the camera in my hand, the sun had moved too low. I'll try again this evening.

The weather today has been perfect...warm with a cool breeze. We attracted Annas Hummingbirds right away. There are something like a dozen different hummingbird varieties here in Arizona. I'm kind of hoping we'll get something other than Annas, but we'll take what we can get. The kitties are both entertained and driven crazy by this. Those are Smitty's ears below. I know because of the little notch out of his left ear...compliments of a gopher he caught when he was a kitten.

Also this morning, I stitched up the four cast-on stitch forget-me-knots on my inchy piece. We're getting very close to having the embroidery finished. The cast-on stitches are still my nemesis stitches. They are hard for me to do, but I got these right...no skill, just luck.

After that, we went on a hike. Wildflowers are in bloom everywhere. I wasn't at all happy with the pictures I got, but here's a little teaser.

These are poppies and lupine, but there were many, many more. I'm going to try to get out tomorrow with my DSLR and a macro lens and see if I can get some better pictures. I'll hold off telling you about the hike until tomorrow's post, and hope I have some better pictures then.

We have one more day here and two nights before we move on to Parker, Arizona.