A short distance south of the Bakerville section of Bisbee is the former town of Warren. This is where the Bisbee City Hall and Bisbee High School are located. Warren has a very old, historic downtown business district that has seen better days. This section of Bisbee has about 1,100 people, which makes it the third most populous section of the sprawling town of Bisbee.
This is the only one of the 8 towns that merged to create modern Bisbee that actually existed on blueprint before it existed in reality. All the other sections of town have streets that were built without any apparent pattern to them because they follow the lay of the land. However, Warren was a planned town. Most of the east-west streets are in an "arc" pattern. That is they run in a northeast direction and then they bend and run in a southeast direction. At the apex of the curve, the streets are intersected by twin streets that run due north-south. These streets, called East Vista Boulevard and West Vista Boulevard, are separated by a long, linear park. Two blocks farther east is Arizona Street, the "main drag" of Warren. Most of the streets in Warren are named after mining company managers, such as Congdon, Hovland, Cole, Briggs, Ruppe and D'Autremont.
Warren does not have steep hills or mountains surrounding it. There are hills, however, but they are not as perpendicular as they are in other parts of town.
Warren was laid out in 1907. Most of the north-south streets end in front of a fabulous mansion that was once occupied by a mining company manager.
On the south edge of Warren, at the intersection of Arizona Street and
Ruppe Avenue, is one of the most legendary sports stadiums in the country--Warren Ballpark. It is a combination football field and baseball field and is used by the Bisbee Pumas high school football and baseball teams. It was originally built as a baseball stadium in 1907 for a semi-pro baseball team, the Bisbee/Douglas Copper Kings. The northeast corner has a very old fashioned baseball grandstand, built out of wood, that looks like something from the early 1900s, which is indeed when the structure was built. On the west side of this stadium are some more modern football grandstands and out in the middle, in the baseball outfield, some temporary grandstands are put up every summer to accommodate visiting teams' fans for football games. These stands are taken down sometime before baseball season starts. This entire structure is enclosed by a high, wooden fence.
This is one of very few sports stadiums in the country that have a state historical marker on it and the only high school-owned stadium I know of with a historical marker.
This venerable, old stadium has played a pivotal role in the history of the Bisbee area and Cochise County and I will go into more detail in future editions of this blog.
