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The first
Saturday in November 2016, we decided to go down to Bisbee, AZ and take
a tour of the Copper Queen Mine. This mine had an interesting
history. It was first found by some members of the army who were
chasing some Apache Indians from Ft. Bowie. They camped in the
area and (after not liking the quality of the local water) sent a scout
to find some better water. He found water in the area of this
mine and it contained rocks known in the area to contain silver.
He persuaded his buddy to stake a mining claim for this area and his
buddy betrayed him and set off to stake the claim for himself. He
got drunk and gambled away his map and instructions. Some other
fellow pursued the claim and got the rights to the mine. |
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second guy was just as bright as the first and got drunk and made a bet
that he could out run a man on a horse. He subsequently lost his
mining claim. The third guy who got it, went to San Francisco and
persuaded three guys to financially back his mining interests.
One was named Dewitt Bisbee. Later a gentleman by the name of
James Douglass (living in Pennsylvania) discovered a new way of
smelting copper. He (while working for Phelps Dodge) persuaded
the company to acquire the mine. He got the choice of either a
flat fee, or 10% of the mine. He chose the latter and became very
wealthy as a result. Obviously these two guys have the local
towns named after them. |
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These boards in
the background are the actual safety boards that the mine used.
They were no longer updated after the mine closed and are now in the
Queen Mine Tours building. Interestingly if you notice, there a
father and son that are the foreman on two different shifts. |
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tour consisted of riding some train cars down into the mine. They
outfitted everyone with a high visibility vest, hard hat, and flash
light. The tour goes 1,800 feet into the mountain. While in
there, some drills are exhibited, some caverns that used to contain ore
deposits, a couple different shafts, different methods of loading the
mine cars for ore removal, how they used dynamite for blasting and
further mine expansion. When this mine was started the drilling
was done by hand with rods and sledge hammers. People were hired
to push around ore cars (2,000 pound) to remove the ore.
Eventually donkeys were used to haul around ore cars. The donkeys
would spend 5 years working underground and would not come out of the
mine until they were retired. They would then be given to the
workers. Then they advanced to little motor driven cars. |
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The mine was
fascinating. According to the tour guides, there was enough
silver and gold produced from the ore that it basically paid for the
entire operations and the copper was pure profit. This copper ore
contained roughly 23% copper. This was an extremely high grade
ore with competing mines working with 8-10% ore. Mining
operations were disbanded with the ore dropped to 4%. Today mines
are profitable while mining 1% copper containing ore. If you read the signs (pictured), this mine was open for 98 years and yielded over 8 trillion pounds of copper. In the early 1900s this mine was the biggest copper producing mine in Arizona. After WWII they stared open pit mining just down the street from the Queen Mine for further ore extraction. Currently the mine is owned by Freeport Macmoran. In the early 2000s FMI was looking into ways to re-opening this mine. Obviously this has yet to happen. |
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tour/musuem was very interesting. I would have liked to spend
hours traveling all over the mine, but that was not feasible. The
mine had 7 different levels all being 100 feet part vertically. Below is a piece of Classic Bisbee Azurite with some Malachite found in the mine. This piece was owned by James Douglas and was donated to the Smithsonian by his son after his death. There were many different minerals (rocks) for sale that were found in and around the mine. Kyle kept trying to talk Terra in to procuring some of them. Eventually Landen also started the begging and after a few minutes, Landen asked Terra, "What was I begging for again?" |
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| Rachel was fascinated with the donkeys. They had some statures of the donkeys and different dioramas set up showing the donkeys in different levels of the mine pulling ore carts. |
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Ethen didn't
want to go on the tour. He almost stayed home because he was
complaining that he shouldn't be subjected to the activities that his
parents want to embark in. He thought that was quite unfair that
he is forced to do the things that his parents want to do. After the tour he was very glad that he went. I think all of the kids really enjoyed it. One nice thing about it, is that they have a slight appreciation for how hard some people have to work. Now when they need to do home work, we have the option to say, well if you don't like school, you can always go and find a mine to work at. FMI is always looking for someone to swing a 16 pound hammer 8 hours a day working shift work. We will see how long that works for. |
| Janelle
did ok down in the mine. She was fascinated with the flash light,
but quickly lost the desire to stay and look at the underground
passages. She would not wear her vest or hat. I think the
tour guides were familiar with this type of behavior as they said I
know she won't wear it, but you have to carry it anyway. So we
carried her safety gear. The guides were knowledagbe as they were
retired miners from this and other mines in the area. Our guide
worked 33 years in underground mines. |
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