In western Arizona lies the company town of Bagdad. Bagdad is a town of about 1,700 people that lies literally at the end of the road. It is located at the very end of State Highway 96. The state maintained highway ends on the east side of town near the baseball and softball fields that are used by the local high school teams. Beyond that point, the street is maintained by the mining company, as is everything else in Bagdad.
The road into Bagdad, State Highway 96, is a very narrow and winding road where one can rarely travel more than 50 miles per hour. 40 to 45 miles per hour is the norm on this road. This highway does not have any banked curves, no shoulders, no guardrails and very few of the modern amenities one would expect to find on a highway. Basically, it is a dirt road that was paved, if that makes any sense. It was once a long dirt road until sometime in the 1970s that was paved with no other improvements being made to it.
There is one other way into Bagdad by vehicle and that is on Lindahl Road. This road is only paved for 3 1/2 miles outside of Bagdad and then it becomes a dirt road that is very washboarded in places and impassable after torrential downpours or snowstorms higher up in the mountains. After Lindahl Road leaves Bagdad, it is still maintained by the mining company until it enters Prescott National Forest, at which point it is maintained by the Forest Service as
Forest Road 68. About 50 miles northeast of Bagdad, Forest Road 68 connects with Williamson Valley Road, a county maintained road that provides a connection to Chino Valley, a town of 13,000 people about 10 miles away, or Prescott, a city of 50,000 that is about 18 miles away. At the intersection with Forest Road 68, the pavement on Williamson Valley Road ends.
Leaving Bagdad on the main road, State Highway 96, it is 39 miles to the nearest road that will provide a connection to Prescott and 43 miles to State Highway 89, which is a busy road that was a federal highway, U.S. Highway 89, until September of 1992. Also four miles outside of Bagdad, State Highway 97 splits off from Highway 96 and winds 16 crooked miles to U.S. Highway 93, which is the main highway between Phoenix and Las Vegas. Despite that connection to a major highway, it is still 32 miles in one direction and 46 miles in the other direction to any type of traveler's services.
Bagdad is owned and operated by Freeport McMoran, a mining company that bought out the more well known mining giant, Phelps-Dodge, in 2007. In turn, Phelps-Dodge bought out the original owners of Bagdad, Cyprus Bagdad Copper Company sometime in the mid to late 1990s, I am not exactly sure when.
Bagdad is a very insular and isolated community and visiting this little mining town in the mountains is like a breath of fresh air because it is not commercialized like most towns today are.
In the next few emails, I will write more about Bagdad.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Company Towns
Company owned towns are towns that were built by a specific industry, usually in a remote area, to provide housing and community services for the company's employees and their families. Company owned towns are usually mining communities that are built close to a mine for the specific purpose of housing employees of the mine.
In a company town, everything is owned by the company, the houses, the streets, the schools, the land, everything. There is usually a company-owned supermarket in these towns, but sometimes the company contracts out to a store chain to operate the supermarket with a certain percentage of the profits going into company coffers. The people that live in these towns pay rent to their employer by means of a paycheck deduction, they put their money in a company owned credit union or bank, eat in company owned restaurants, go to movies in a company owned theater, go to company owned schools. however, the pay scale in these towns is usually pretty high, quite a but higher than other towns nearby.
Company towns have a unique look to them. For example, all, or most, of the houses look identical to each other, same size, same style, etc. There are a few houses that are different and these are usually manager's houses or supervisor's houses. The businesses in these towns are all built according to a particular architectural style and, in the company towns I have personally been to, that architectural style is usually Spanish style, white stucco buildings with red tile roofs or red shingle roofs.
One thing I have noticed about company towns is that they are very neat, clean and orderly. They are very well tended and maintained. Very few of these towns have a traditional street grid. These towns are usually designed with curving streets.
Usually these towns are policed by the company's private security force, but sometimes the security force works in conjunction with the county sheriff's department, which may have a substation in town.
Any hospitals or clinics in these towns are company owned, but may be contracted out to a private company.
The state I lived in for 18 years, Arizona, has 2 company towns, Bagdad and Morenci, but it used to have more. One of them, San Manuel, was a company town owned by ASARCO until 2003, but now it is a "regular" town, for lack of a better term. The residents there now own their property. San Manuel is now basically a bedroom community for Tucson.
There were once other company towns in Arizona, such as Clarkdale, Ajo, Kearny and Superior, but they were given up by their respective companies years ago. One of them, Ajo, still looks like a company town even through Phelps Dodge (now Freeport-McMoran), gave it up in the 1980s. It still has the orderliness of a company town even though it no longer is. But some of this orderliness is now abandoned, such as the huge hospital on the hill in the southern part of town. The downtown plaza of Ajo has the Spanish style look that I mentioned earlier.
San Manuel still looks like a company town, but it was a company town until 9 years ago.
Kearny still looks like a company town, but it no longer is. Now it is an incorporated town with its own municipal government and police force. Other former company towns have become ghost towns when the company no longer had any use for them or were re-located because an open pit mine swallowed up the original townsite. Some of these former company towns, after being given up by the company, have fallen on hard times and are now extremely rundown, dilapidated and poverty stricken.
In a company town, everything is owned by the company, the houses, the streets, the schools, the land, everything. There is usually a company-owned supermarket in these towns, but sometimes the company contracts out to a store chain to operate the supermarket with a certain percentage of the profits going into company coffers. The people that live in these towns pay rent to their employer by means of a paycheck deduction, they put their money in a company owned credit union or bank, eat in company owned restaurants, go to movies in a company owned theater, go to company owned schools. however, the pay scale in these towns is usually pretty high, quite a but higher than other towns nearby.
Company towns have a unique look to them. For example, all, or most, of the houses look identical to each other, same size, same style, etc. There are a few houses that are different and these are usually manager's houses or supervisor's houses. The businesses in these towns are all built according to a particular architectural style and, in the company towns I have personally been to, that architectural style is usually Spanish style, white stucco buildings with red tile roofs or red shingle roofs.
One thing I have noticed about company towns is that they are very neat, clean and orderly. They are very well tended and maintained. Very few of these towns have a traditional street grid. These towns are usually designed with curving streets.
Usually these towns are policed by the company's private security force, but sometimes the security force works in conjunction with the county sheriff's department, which may have a substation in town.
Any hospitals or clinics in these towns are company owned, but may be contracted out to a private company.
The state I lived in for 18 years, Arizona, has 2 company towns, Bagdad and Morenci, but it used to have more. One of them, San Manuel, was a company town owned by ASARCO until 2003, but now it is a "regular" town, for lack of a better term. The residents there now own their property. San Manuel is now basically a bedroom community for Tucson.
There were once other company towns in Arizona, such as Clarkdale, Ajo, Kearny and Superior, but they were given up by their respective companies years ago. One of them, Ajo, still looks like a company town even through Phelps Dodge (now Freeport-McMoran), gave it up in the 1980s. It still has the orderliness of a company town even though it no longer is. But some of this orderliness is now abandoned, such as the huge hospital on the hill in the southern part of town. The downtown plaza of Ajo has the Spanish style look that I mentioned earlier.
San Manuel still looks like a company town, but it was a company town until 9 years ago.
Kearny still looks like a company town, but it no longer is. Now it is an incorporated town with its own municipal government and police force. Other former company towns have become ghost towns when the company no longer had any use for them or were re-located because an open pit mine swallowed up the original townsite. Some of these former company towns, after being given up by the company, have fallen on hard times and are now extremely rundown, dilapidated and poverty stricken.
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