Peace, Love and Joy

Bisbee, AZ  High 78  Low 42

Bisbee, founded in 1880, is located in the Mule Mountains, Once known as “the Queen of the Copper Camps”, this Old West mining camp proved to be one of the richest mineral sites in the world, producing nearly three million ounces of gold and more than eight billion pounds of copper, not to mention the silver, lead and zinc that came from the mountains.

 

By the early 1900s, Bisbee was the largest city between St. Louis and San Francisco.

Bisbee was a thriving community until the large scale mining operations became unprofitable in the mid 1970’s. As mining employees left to go elsewhere, many artistic free spirits found Bisbee an ideal, attractive, and inexpensive location to settle and pursue their artistic endeavors.

Peace, Love and Joy in Bisbee

I learned one very important lesson while we were in Bisbee – I could never have been a miner. 

We took the Queen Mine Tour in Bisbee. Great tour especially since your tour guide is a retired miner. The only problem I had was he is so familiar with the job that he uses a lot of jargon and I didn’t understand what he was telling us. But I still learned a lot and really enjoyed it.

It’s cold in the mine.

 

 

 

First of all, you get all dressed up.

Then you get on the mine train and head into the depths of the mountain.

Our tour guide used to be a miner and was very knowledgeable. Just one problem, I didn’t understand half of what he was talking about. However, the part I figured out was really interesting and you could tell he enjoyed doing these tours.

Lots of old rusted stuff for Diane

This was of special interest – Benny (our guide) told us how the miners used to entertain themselves with the new guys. The new guy would sit down to use the facilities and the older miners would let off the brake so it would roll down the tracks.

A great tour. We have had a wonderful time playing tourist this week.

I have one more post on Bisbee but that will be for tomorrow.