Bisbee, part 7

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.

Bisbee, part 6

2 miles south of Tintown, the poorest part of Bisbee, is "New" Bisbee. This is the most populated part of Bisbee today, with about 4,500 people. This part of town was not one of the eight towns that merged to form modern Bisbee. Instead, this area was settled in the mid 1960s and now has nearly half of the town's population. This part of town does not have a downtown business district. The heart of "New" Bisbee is the intersection of Highway 92 and Naco Highway, which is the busiest intersection in town. Clustered around this intersection are several fast food restaurants and a big shopping center, or strip mall.
Also, a little farther south, is the Cochise County Government Complex. It is an 8-building complex that houses most functions of the county government. Everything except the county court system is located here. Court functions are still carried out at the old county courthouse in "Old" Bisbee. The old courthouse use to house the entire county government, back in the days when government was much smaller.
The county complex is located on a street with a pleasant name--Melody Lane. The administration building has a very large picture window with a great view! The window looks out across a big, grassy valley towards the towns of Naco, Arizona and
Naco, Sonora, Mexico. These towns are 5 miles away. The view is downhill and several mountain ranges in Mexico are visible. I love this view!
This part of Bisbee is the only section of town that does not have steep hills or mountains completely surrounding it. This part of town is not exactly flat, though. Instead it is on a downhill slope for nearly its entire area. This area is mostly a grassland.
This part of town has the middle school and an elementary school. It also has a post office, one of three post offices for a town with slightly less than 10,000 people.
I have one more part of Bisbee to talk about. This final section of town has a legendary history, quite possibly more legendary than "Old" Bisbee. It is also the location of a rather unique sports stadium.

Bisbee, part 5

Next door to Galena, heading southwest on highway 92, are the former towns of Briggs and Tintown. The Briggs section of Bisbee lies mostly west of the highway and the Tintown section is mostly on the east side. Briggs was founded in 1901 and had 285 people at its peak. Today it has about 200. Like Galena, it was mostly residential with very few businesses.
Tintown was the poorest of the eight towns that merged to form modern Bisbee and it is still the poorest part of town. With the exception of Highway 92, every street in the Tintown section is dirt. The former City Hall is located on one of those dirt streets with windows missing and part of its roof missing. This area has about 75 people. At its peak it had nearly 1,000,so it has alot of empty buildings and ruins. It was first settled in 1898 by Mexican laborers.
Between the Galena and Briggs sections of Bisbee is one of only 2 intersections in town that have traffic lights, the intersection of State Highway 92 and School Terrace Road.
The next section of town I will talk about is called Bakerville. It is adjacent to the Lowell section of town, on the southeast, on Bisbee Road and due east of the Galena section. Today, the Bakerville section has about 500 people, but at its peak, the town of Bakerville had about 3,400 people. As might be expected, this section of town has alot of abandoned, dilapidated buildings. The downtown business district has a few businesses still open, but most of them are abandoned. The main feature of Bakerville is Copper Queen Hospital, which has only 13 beds, making it the smallest hospital in Arizona. Bakerville was settled in 1905.
I have 2 more sections of Bisbee to talk about. One of them has the majority of the town's population today, even more people than "Old" Bisbee. It is also the newest part of town, not part of the original merger. The other section has the most legendary history of all the town's sections, possibly more legendary than "Old" Bisbee.

Bisbee, part 4

The next part of Bisbee that I want to talk about was once the town of Saginaw, named after the city in Michigan. It sits about 1/4 mile east of Lowell. When Lowell and Bisbee were separate towns, their boundaries touched. The "main drag" of Saginaw is Old Douglas Road, which is the old alignment of U.S. Highway 80, forerunner to today's State Highway 80. This highway once was called "The Broadway of America," and it ran from Tybee Island, Georgia to San Diego, California. Now the highway ends in Dallas, Texas. Everything west of Dallas has been downgraded to either a state highway, county road, city street, federally-owned business loop through certain cities, or it has even been abandoned in some places.
There isn't much left to Saginaw's downtown business district. There are a few abandoned buildings, one occupied business, and several empty spaces where buildings once stood. Either they were the victim of a fire or they were demolished because they had fallen into really poor condition. All of the streets in the former town of Saginaw, with the exception of Old Douglas Road, have letter designations, such as "A" Street. The letters stop at "M" Street. The streets in both directions have letter designations, which is unusual. Lettered streets are usually parallel to each other.
Saginaw had about 400 people at its peak, but now this area is home to about 100 people. The main feature of this part of Bisbee is an elementary school, one of three elementary schools in Bisbee. The entire area that once comprised Saginaw lies north of State Highway 80's current alignment. When the highway was rerouted, it was built along the southern edge of Saginaw.
A short distance southwest of the former town of Lowell, on State Highway 92, is Galena, another one of the eight towns that merged to create modern Bisbee. Again, the boundaries of the towns of Lowell and Galena touched, just like the boundary between Lowell and Saginaw. Galena never really had a discernible downtown area and not much in the way of businesses, it was mostly residential. The population of Galena at its peak was about 350, and it is still about the same today. What was once the Galena City Hall is now a pool hall and bar.

Bisbee, part 3

When State Highway 80 goes east from the oldest part of Bisbee, it runs along the edge of a deep, open pit, a relic from the town's mining days. It is called the Lavender Pit. It is nearly half a mile deep and one mile wide. When the pit was active, it expanded so much that highway 80 had to be re-routed because the pit was threatening to destroy the highway. Now there is an overlook on the edge of the highway so people can look down into the dark recesses of the pit.
One mile east of "Old" Bisbee is the first of the former towns that amalgated into the larger town of Bisbee. It is called Lowell and the vast majority of this former town has been swallowed up by the pit.
The main feature of the Lowell section of Bisbee is a traffic circle, or roundabout, where State Highway 80, State Highway 92, Bisbee Road, Erie Street and Old Douglas Road all come together. Old Douglas Road is an earlier routing of highway 80, predating the traffic circle.
Erie Street was once the principal downtown business street of Lowell. Now it goes west a short distance, about the equivalent of one city block, and then dead-ends at a high fence on the edge of the pit. The Lowell downtown area has a few businesses still open, but most of them are abandoned. The most notable of the abandoned businesses is a former Sprouse-Reitz store. Sprouse-Reitz was a "five and dime" store much like the more famous Woolworth's. The chain was headquartered in Portland, Oregon. The chain was in business from 1909 until 1993, when the entire chain liquidated. In 1991, the dying company changed its name to Sprouse! in the hopes they would stay in business for awhile longer, but it didn't work. When the name change was made, there were only 84 Sprouse-Reitz stores still in business, down from a peak of nearly 400 stores.
Along Erie Street, the "Sprouse-Reitz" letters on the front facade of the building are still very visible, looking almost as though the store is still open for business. I wonder how long Erie Street used to be before most of it disappeared into the pit? I wonder how many buildings also went into the pit? Presently, there is a small parking area next to the fence that lines the edge of the pit. Just one foot from the fence, there is a curb that is seemingly out of place. It is an ordinary street curb except that it runs next to the fence for quite a distance on each side of Erie Street. This curb is all that remains of a street. It runs along the east edge of the former street. About 1 foot beyond the curb is the fence and about 1 foot beyond that is the rim of the pit. This is where a street intersection used to be. On the east side of this curb, I saw 5 concrete slabs, all that remain of businesses that used to line the east side of this street. I saw 4 concrete slabs north of Erie Street and 1 slab south of Erie Street. The sidewalks that run in front of the commercial buildings nearby now run off into the pit, the western part of both sidewalks suffered the same fate as the western part of Erie Street.
Today the population of the Lowell section of Bisbee is about 25. The town once had 2,700 people. Lowell was founded in 1905.

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.

Bisbee, an introduction

Twenty-four miles southeast of Tombstone, on highway 80, is the beautiful little town of Bisbee. This is the town that took the county seat away from a dying Tombstone in 1929. The Cochise County government remains in Bisbee to this day, even though the burgeoning town of Sierra Vista wants to take the county seat away from them.
Bisbee is situated in the Mule Mountains in southeastern Arizona. In fact, State Highway 80 tunnels through the mountains just west of town. At the east exit from the tunnel is the city limit sign for Bisbee. The entire town, except for the newest portion, is located in the mountains and, as a result, there are alot of extremely steep, narrow streets.
The modern-day town of Bisbee is the result of a merger of 8 separate towns that were in close proximity to each other, plus a new area that was developed in the
1960s and now contains the bulk of the population. This area is sometimes referred to as "New Bisbee." Bisbee has 9,787 people.
The oldest and most scenic part of Bisbee, sometimes called "Old Bisbee," or
"Downtown Bisbee," is the most visited by tourists and the most photographed part of town. The majority of this area lies in the bottom of Tombstone Canyon and, in many places, Main Street, whose name changes to Tombstone Canyon Road west of the downtown area, lies directly above Tombstone Creek.
This original part of Bisbee was founded in 1880 when copper was discovered in the surrounding mountains. The town was named for Judge DeWitt Bisbee. He was a major financial backer for the Copper Queen Mine. After several decades of copper mining, turquoise was also discovered, expanding the growth that had already occurred in the area. "Old" Bisbee has steep, narrow and crooked streets. Many of them are so narrow that cars parallel park on one side while traffic goes down the other side of the street. There are also streets that are only wide enough for one car to fit so, as a result, they have one-way traffic. There is one street that is only 5 feet wide! It is still open to traffic, but it is barely wide enough for even one car to fit. Main Street/Tombstone Canyon Road is the original routing of highway 80 through Bisbee. The current highway is south of this area and sits on a shelf that was blasted out of the side of a mountain. Where the old highway and new highway meet,on both ends of "Old" Bisbee, there is an interchange, like a freeway interchange, that involves an overpass, exit ramps and entrance ramps.
On both sides of the canyon, commercial buildings and houses climb up the slopes of the mountains and also snake their way into narrow ravines and defiles between mountains. There are alot of houses that are not accessible by any of the town's streets. Instead, the occupants of the house park their cars in a small parking lot on the side of the street and then climb a bunch of steps up to their house, in some cases, as many as 100 steps have to be climbed! There are many cases where a person in one house can literally look down the chimney into the house below because the slope is so steep! The county courthouse, on Ledge Avenue, is in this situation. A person can stand in the parking lot or at the window on the top floor, and look down the chimney into the house below. Consequently, people that live in the house above the courthouse can look down onto the roof of the courthouse. Ledge Avenue, which runs in front of the courthouse, has a steep dropoff on the opposite side of the street. The dropoff is at least 50 feet. Quality Hill Street, behind the courthouse, has a steep climb up to the houses on the other side of the street. Today, the county courthouse, which dates from 1930, only houses the court functions of the county. The county government now presides on the south end of town,in "New Bisbee,"
in a 8 building complex.