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BISBEE — Michael London used to be a Western movie stuntman. And though it’s been a long time since he fell off of a movie set building or was dragged behind a horse, he still likes Western ways and old days and likes to tell a story, or two, about the early days of the rough and tumble mining town known as Bisbee.
He likes it so much, he decided to start a walking tour and talk a bit about the history, tall tales and architecture. So every day, he’s in his Western garb and walking the streets of Old Bisbee, telling folks just what life and the old town used to be like.
Sunday, he had a small group, just a couple, Jim and Dorothy Kosi, from Idaho who happened to be visiting Bisbee and liked the idea of hearing about Bisbee history.
London started with Del Webb, the art deco architect who built the Phelps Dodge Mercantile Building on Main Street back in the 1930s after a fire leveled the former building on the site. Phelps Dodge officials wanted it designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, but he was too busy and told them to contact Webb. It was the first and only art deco-style building in the city of Victorian and Southwestern-style architecture. It also was the first building designed by Webb.
 Michael London begins his walking tour of Bisbee in front of the Bisbee Historical and Mining Museum. Dorothy Kosi, visiting from Meridan, Idaho, took the tour on Sunday. (Suzanne Cronn•Herald/Review) |
London had many old 8-by-10-inch black-and-white photographs of the city, though he admits he lost some to his young granddaughter and her crayons.
“She decided they looked better in color,” he said with a laugh.
So, he had to improvise and found some smaller photographs of the same downtown scenes. What was remarkable was the number of commercial enterprises and homes back then in the late 1880s and the early 1900s, compared to what exists now.
Many of the spots that are now parking lots once held huge three and four-story commercial buildings, he explained. On the mountainside across Highway 80, he showed a photo of the old smelter that changed the rock to money. Though it was a sign of the riches found in the Copper Queen Mine and other mining endeavors, it also brought clouds of harmful pollutants that caused the deaths of many children and older folks from respiratory problems caused by the toxic fumes.
Hard rock mining was new to the U.S. back then, and miners were brought in from European countries, and Bisbee became a melting pot of many cultures and ethnicities. To make new employees feel at home, a church for every denomination was built. A Serbian Church in Warren still exists today, and across the street from it is a former Croatian church, he said. Episcopalian, Catholic, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches were built.
Bisbee in 1915 was a bustling town of 27,000 people; 7,000 were miners working for one of the many mining companies at the time.
“It was a 24-hour-a-day town back then. The city never stopped from 1895 to 1920,” he said.
To serve such a city, Phelps Dodge also built hospitals, clinics and the Copper Queen Hotel — the longest, continuously operated hotel in the state. The company also constructed the largest library in the state at the time.
One of the biggest changes to the landscape, though, was the destruction of a 7,500-foot mountain in the quest for copper. The Lavender Pit, 900 feet deep and covering around 300 acres in area, was created by the process of open-pit mining. All that remains of the mountain top is a chunk of rock a few hundred feet high, he explained.
He also pointed out the many out-of-the-ordinary trees — like the Italian Cypress, magnolias and palms — came from California roadways as the highway department added lanes and improved streets and highways. Somehow they have managed to survive in the desert for more than 60 years.
Since the miners in the early days liked to “drink and drill,” four lock-ups were built in the various districts to take care of the inebriated souls who got into trouble, he added. At one time, there were 116 establishments that served liquor, from sling-’er-back places to gentlemen’s resorts. In fact, the oldest building standing in Bisbee is the old lock-up on Subway Street, which, incidentally was named not after the New York transportation system but after the subterranean drainage way that collected rainwater during the monsoon.
One of his favorite places in town is the old Fair Building that now houses the Bisbee Restoration Museum and features bits and pieces from life of the residents and businesses of the old mining town.
London never tires of his tours and always finds a little something different to say on every tour. He still seeks out information that gives still another tidbit of Bisbee life back in copper’s heyday.
“I started this in 1994 and stopped in 2000 after I had an accident. I’m not independently wealthy, and I had to go back to work. I love doing this,” he said. “I’m so involved with history, this seemed to be the best way for me to make a living. I found my niche.”
Herald/Review reporter Shar Porier can be reached at 515-4692 or by e-mail at shar.porier@bisbeereview.net.
tom wrote on Mar 3, 2008 6:16 PM: