Bisbee, part 2

The original part of Bisbee is home to an annual event, held each October, called
the "1000 Stair Climb." It is a 5 kilometer endurance run that involves climbing up 1,034 stairs on its route. The old part of Bisbee is definitely the place to hold such an event. Runners are serenaded by musicians that are stationed at various points along the route.
The old part of Bisbee only has 2 continuous streets--Highway 80 and Main Street/Tombstone Canyon Road. They both run east and west. All of the other streets are short and narrow. Most of them climb up a steep hill and then abruptly dead-end. A few of them connect with other streets and many of them are loops. There are 2 streets, OK Street(named after the OK Corral in Tombstone) and Youngblood Hill Street that are "staircase streets." They are so steep that modern day vehicles, with the possible exception of 4-wheel drive vehicles, cannot negotiate the streets. The grade on OK Street is 62% and on Youngblood Hill Street, it is 77%. A percent grade means that, for example, for every 100 feet of distance, Youngblood Hill Street climbs 77 feet. That is extremely steep. Interstate highways never have grades steeper than 6% and 2-lane highways rarely go beyond 10%, even in the mountains.
Both streets are lined with businesses, since they are in the downtown business district, but people have to walk, or should I say "climb," to patronize these businesses. Some of these buildings are abandoned, but most are still in operation.
The steepest street that I know of in Arizona that is open to vehicular traffic is a portion of North 4th Street in Globe that has a 34% grade. Whenever I am in Globe and I drive that street, when I am at a stop sign and then proceed, the car rolls backward in the few seconds after I take my foot of the brake and apply it to the gas pedal. There are many streets in Bisbee like this, but I think North 4th Street in Globe is the steepest. The steepest Bisbee street that is open to vehicles is Brewery Avenue, a short distance west of the "staircase streets."
The old part of Bisbee is full of architecture from the 1800s and early 1900s. It is an absolute paradise for aficionados of old architecture, like me. Alot of movies have been filmed in Bisbee. Some portions of Young Guns II were filmed there. Also, the western, "3:10 to Yuma", both the original in 1957 and the 2007 remake, were filmed in Bisbee."Old Bisbee" also stood in for Roswell, New Mexico in the
Martin Sheen movie "Roswell" about the famous 1947 UFO incident. This was surprising because the landscapes of the two towns bear no resemblance to each other. Roswell is on the flat plains of eastern New Mexico. The downtown post office in Bisbee served as the Chaves County Courthouse in that movie.
"Old " Bisbee has also stood in for European cities in alot of movies because of the architecture.
The old high school just to the west of the downtown area on Clawson Avenue,
demonstrates the steepness of the old part of town very well. It is three stories tall, but each floor has a ground-level entrance because it is on the side of a
mountain. The gymnasium is on the second floor. Part of the old high school is now the county historical museum.
The streets in this part of town have absolutely no pattern to them. They basically follow the lay of the land. There are also several terraces or shelves on the mountainsides that are the location of former streets.
The mining boom ended in 1950. After that, Bisbee started to die off. At its peak, the town had about 21,000 people. In the late 1950s, the population had dwindled to about 6,200. However, in the late 1970s, the town experienced a rebirth as a tourist destination and art colony mainly because of the beauty of the town's location and its historic architecture. The population has bounced back and is now approaching 10,000 people. Considering the fact that the population is only about half of what it once was, there aren't that many abandoned buildings in the old part of town. There are alot of abandoned buildings in other portions of the town, however. In the old part of town, many of the formerly abandoned buildings have been lovingly restored and are now showpieces of late 19th and early 20th century architecture. There are alot of antique shops and gift shops in the old part of town that cater to the thousands of tourists that visit every year from all over the world.
In the next installmet of this blog, I will go into detail about the different sections of Bisbee. There were once 8 nearby towns, basically suburbs, that merged in the early 1900s to form the enlarged city of Bisbee. The town also has a newer portion that was settled in the late 1960s.
Today,"Old" Bisbee has about 3,200 people.