The Queen Mine and Tombstone

Tues Feb 16 – Headed out to the historic town of Bisbee, about 90 miles south and east of Tucson. Founded in 1880, Bisbee was the “Queen of the Copper Camps.” The mines in Bisbee produced more than 8 billion pounds of copper, as well as 3 million ounces of gold along with some silver, lead and zinc. By 1900 Bisbee had a population of about 20,000 and was the largest cosmopolitan center between St Louis and San Francisco. Hard to believe because today it’s in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE!

Bisbee is in the Mule Mountains at 5,300’ elevation. Had to drive through Mule Pass Tunnel at 5,449’ to get there. The town was built into the sides of the Mule Mountains so stairs of all shapes and sizes meander through the town and there are many steep and winding streets.

Lots of quaint old buildings, some on the National Register of Historic Places. Probably the best known is the Copper Queen Hotel built in 1902. The hotel is said to be haunted and every Thursday night there is a ghost hunt.

One of the biggest attractions in Bisbee is the Queen Mine which closed in the 1970’s but now offers mine tours. Our tour guide was Joe, a former miner who had worked in this mine for about 10 years. They gave us slickers and hard hats and battery-powered lanterns for the trip. The mine is a constant 47° year round.

We rode the mine train 1500’ in at the third level.

Pretty close quarters. We could reach out and touch the walls.

Joe is showing us how the miners drilled holes for the dynamite. In the old days, all the work was done by hand. A steel chisel was hammered into the walls to make the holes. And the dirt and ore was hauled out by mules. In later years, they used air powered drills like the ones in the picture and electric trains to pull the ore cars.

Dynamite holes with fuse hanging out. They would drill 15 or 20 holes over a 4’ by 5’ area, sometimes stuffing many sticks of dynamite into one hole. They would set the fuses, each one ½” longer than the one before. Then they would light the fuses and walk around a corner into another section of the mine and wait for the blast. After the blast they would go back and start loading the rubble into small ore carts like the ones in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.”

There is an elevator within the mine to haul men to and from the different levels of the mine. Here is a list of what the bell signals for the elevator mean.

Nature calls, even several hundred feet below the surface. Can’t see it in this picture but the crapper is mounted on railroad style wheels. It was rolled to the surface about once every two weeks be emptied. Joe says, it sure was cold to sit on. Guess there would be an advantage if someone was there just ahead of you.

The miners actually brought rats and cockroaches into the mine when it was being worked and even fed them because they were the early warning sign of any tremors caused by a cave in or earthquake. If the critters were running out of the mine, you’d better be running too.


Left Bisbee and drove about 20 miles north to Tombstone. This historic town was a pretty wild place in the old west. It is, of course, the place where the famous gunfight at the O. K. Corral took place in 1881.

Wyatt Earp along with his brothers Virgil and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday fought the Clantons and McLaurys. Three people were killed and Virgil Earp was crippled. There is still much debate about who fired the first shot.

We missed the reenactment of the shootout but looks like the good guys won again because we saw Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday walking down Main Street.

Jim tried his hand at shooting an Old West handgun at the Big Iron Shooting Gallery. The gun was a .44 caliber double action revolver however it was loaded with paint ball bullets so no kick and no big bang. He did have to pull the hammer back for every shot. What a marksman! If that cardboard cutout had been a real bad guy, Jim would have been elected sheriff.

Tombstone Courthouse State Park, unfortunately will be closed in March due to budget cuts. So sad.

We drove by the Boothill Graveyard on our way out of town but didn’t stop as we had been here several years ago. There is some debate as to whether this is the original cemetery and we are sure the original wooden grave markers would have crumbled to dust by now, but it is a fun place to visit. Several Clantons (from the gunfight) are buried here. One of the most memorable headstones reads “Here lies Lester Moore, four slugs from a .44, no Les, no more” and, our personal favorite, “Here lies George Johnson, hanged by mistake, 1882. He was right. We was wrong. But we strung him up, and now he’s gone.”