Ghosts & Mines: Exploring Bisbee, AZ
When we set out for our second contract in Arizona, a couple of activities that we were not able to do during our first contract went straight to the top of the list. The first of these for us to check off the list was heading southeast to Bisbee, Arizona. This tiny town sits about 12 miles north of the U.S./Mexico border. With a rich mining history, its connection to the Wild West, as well as a deep and eerie connection to ghosts, this town was well worth exploring. With the historical town of Tombstone just north of it, we had a full weekend of adventures set. To add to all the fun and excitement, Amity’s co-worker Katie joined us.
Mile: 79,921
Quote of the Blog: “I’m your Huckleberry.” - Doc Holiday
Song of the Blog: “Bisbee Blue” - Calexico
Long drives in the desert are always so intriguing. The desert has hidden sights along the way that you wouldn’t see otherwise. It makes both of us think about people living out here when all you had was your feet and maybe a horse. One of the more intriguing things we have learned about southern Arizona is that it is much more mountainous than we expected, and the mountains are huge! This makes for some very interesting areas, which Bisbee happens to be in. As you drive between Tombstone and Bisbee, there are so many rolling hills, valleys, mountains, and ravines. It’s like something out of this world, but here it is. Bisbee sits within a ravine on a mountain range at just over 5,500’ in elevation. It has been a copper mining town since the early 1800s. The town now has a deep connection to historical copper mining, and some smaller open pit mines predominantly pulling turquoise out of the ground, specifically Bisbee Blue Turquoise. We learned on this trip they are very proud of their Bisbee Blue Turquoise, which is very pretty! We rented a room at the Warner Hotel. Bisbee is a small town, so everything is walkable.
We met Katie downtown in Bisbee. Parking was a little bit of a situation, but we were able to find a spot and start our weekend of walking around. The town is built on a hill and is known for having a walking route that includes 1,000 steps throughout the dozens of staircases throughout town. We started by walking down to the hotel to see when we could get checked in and where we could park. Luckily, we found a spot to park right next to the hotel, so we didn’t have to take our stuff very far. Once we were all situated in our rooms, we set off for an afternoon of exploring. We walked around town checking out the different shops along the way. Bisbee has a lot of murals, street art, and fun, funky things to look at. This eclectic mix gives the town its very own feel. Amity and Katie checked out a lot of the stores and shopping while I explored some of the street art they had. It didn’t take us too long to walk across the entire town. We made our first pit stop at the Old Bisbee Brewing Company for a quick local beer before finding a spot for dinner. While enjoying our beer in the sunshine, we learned that Bisbee does not have a lot of restaurants, which means they fill up really fast or they are closed. We got lucky again by going down to the Bisbee Table for dinner. The food was great, and we only had about a half-hour wait for a table. Following dinner, the night plan was to head out on a tour of town with the Old Bisbee Ghost Tour!
I have never seen a ghost, but Amity’s dad has stories about things he has experienced that don’t have an answer to them. So, something has to be going on. We hoped that going on this tour would hopefully shed some light on this. The tour started at the town center, where we met our tour guide. She absolutely fit the bill for a ghost tour guide! Not only did she look the part, but she lived in Bisbee and had her own stories of strange paranormal experiences. She took us on a tour along the streets of downtown Bisbee and up several of the many staircases around town. She was very informative and showed us several spots where people had reported seeing ghosts around town. Many of these places included some kind of horrific death, mass murder, or crazy trauma at the location. In a historical copper mining town, that is just about every inch of the town. What made the tour even more fun was the fact that Amity rented a Ghost Detection Tool for the tour. This is an electromagnetic field reader that picks up on high-energy areas. The other people on the tour would stop and stare at Amity any time it would start beeping and lighting up. It made this tour very funny at times! At the end of it all, neither Amity nor Katie saw any ghosts. I personally still think the jury is out on the whole ghost thing, but the history and stories we learned about Bisbee were amazing! Absolutely worth it! Following the tour, we were all so tired we didn’t even notice the ghost butler at the hotel door as we walked in and headed to bed.
The next morning, we met back up with Katie at a coffee shop attached to the hotel called Earl’s Café. We did not have any ghost experiences that night, but Katie did report that she woke up at one point and couldn’t go back to sleep because she couldn’t stop thinking about ghosts. It was a comical way to start the day. We took a little bit of time in the morning to head down to Lowell, AZ, to a spot Katie knew about. There is this block of buildings that is lined with really old and rusted cars. It makes for a scene right out of a movie. The whole thing is right next to the Lavender Pit, which is one of the active open mines in the area. We spent some time taking photos and looking at all of the old stuff, like the old gas station with pumps showing ¢38 gasoline. This time capsule was a really fun and entertaining activity.
We had a couple more hours before a tour Amity and I had scheduled to go down into the old mining shafts in Bisbee, so the three of us headed north to check out Tombstone. This town let me down a little bit. Yes, it is very historical and full of great ways to learn about the town, all of the major players in its history, and the whole OK Corral saga, but there was one glaring issue. That is the fact that every single thing, activity, or historical building came with a $5–$20 entry fee. Literally everywhere but the stores and shops. Still, it was pretty cool to come down and walk the streets of Tombstone with all of the actors walking around in their western attire and the horse-drawn carriages pulling people around. We did go into The Birdcage Theater for a self-guided tour. After getting a brief rundown of this theater’s history, its connection to prostitution, and the stories of regular gun violence inside, we were able to head into the theater and walk around. This was really cool. For a spot where people like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday would frequent, it was pretty small. I bet it could get loud and rowdy in there when they had women dancing and singing on the stage. There were all kinds of artifacts from historical Tombstone in there, like a horse-drawn hearse. It must have been a crazy time to be alive. Not that now isn’t or anything. We made our way out of the theater and continued on our walk around town. Before we headed back to Bisbee, Katie scored big by finding a beautiful turquoise ring at one of the shops!
Once we got back to Bisbee, Katie’s path diverted from ours. She continued back to Lowell to explore some more, while we headed over to the Copper Queen Mine for a tour down into the mountain. The Copper Queen Mine was first started in the 1880s. The ore’s copper concentration was so high that it led to the mine becoming the largest copper mine in Arizona and one of the largest in the West. The tour was pretty fun, and that’s coming from a jaded tourist. Once we were fitted with a helmet and a light, we all got onto a makeshift train that was fitted with bench-like seats that we straddled as the train’s engine pulled the line of cars down into the mine. The mine shaft was not very wide, and the ride was bumpy. We were able to see many different shafts and tunnels as we went further down into the mine. We didn’t go too far down, but it was far enough that if something happened, we were screwed! At this point, the only thing holding the mine tunnels up are wooden trusses and frames mixed with some early 1900s engineering. We learned how the ore was pulled from the mines, the different jobs in the mine shafts, and some of the tools of the trade. One of the more eye-catching sights was a toilet that would come around for the workers. It featured two seats right next to each other and was fitted to run on the rail lines in the mine shafts. I couldn’t imagine having to use that! Something I enjoyed was learning about the explosives they use to lengthen the mine shafts and the process of blowing the walls up. It’s hard to think that you could be at work, blowing up rock walls, miles under the surface of the ground. I don’t think there is enough money in the world to get me to do this, but working with the explosives would be fun. The tour was not very long, but it did allow us to get off the train, walk around some of the mine shafts, and go up into a larger cavern where they had mined out some of the copper ore they were after. After a quick train ride back out, we were able to see the light of day again! We didn’t have anything else on our list after the tour, so we headed north toward Tucson.
On the way up, we had a quick thought to check out the Tombstone Brewery. We had found a couple of their beers in the Tucson area and figured this would probably be the only time we would be in this area again. The moment we walked in, we were greeted by a couple of people sitting at the bar. One of the men was a local who works in the town as an actor in one of the Tombstone shootout spots. He was funny because he was having a hard time not talking in his 1800s western accent. The brewery was nothing special, but they had good beer, and if Doc Holliday was alive, he would have been there. Following our quick pit stop for a drink, we finished our drive up to Tucson. This was a fun weekend checking off an activity we have had on our radar for two years now. Being able to share it with Katie made it even more exciting and fun! Thanks, Katie, for joining us! Now it’s back to work before we can Live Rad again!