Hey friends, welcome back to Grand Adventure!
I'm your host Marc Guido, and in this episode we're going to explore the
historic mining-town-turned-tourist-town of Bisbee, down in the far southeastern
corner of Arizona, and we're also going to go explore the Dragoon Mountains up
behind camp. So stay tuned!
For our visit to Bisbee we're still boondocking away from everyone else
along Forest Road 687 within Arizona's Coronado National Forest, at the foot of
the Dragoon Mountains just north of Tombstone. If you'd like more information
about camping along Forest Road 687 watch our previous episode number 143 on
Tombstone which, we'll link to right here on the screen.
Bisbee is located about 24 miles south of Tombstone, and the drive across the floor
of the Sonoran Desert and up into the Mule Mountains is incredibly scenic.
Less than eight miles from the Mexican border, Bisbee was founded as a copper,
gold and silver mining town in 1880. It was named in honor of Judge DeWitt Bisbee,
one of the financial backers of the adjacent Copper Queen Mine. Because its
plan was laid out to a pedestrian scale, before the automobile, Old Bisbee is
compact and walkable, but not a place to drive your RV. The town's hilly terrain
is exemplified by the old four-story high school -- each floor has a
ground-level entrance. Mining in the Mule Mountains proved quite successful. In the
early 20th century the population of Bisbee soared to more than 9,000. In 1917,
open-pit mining was successfully introduced to meet the copper demand
during World War I. Mining operations in Bisbee ceased in 1975, and heritage
tourism replaced mining as Bisbee's economic driver. Artist Steven Hutchison
and his wife Marcia purchased the Copper Queen Hotel, as well as other buildings
in the downtown area. Actor John Wayne was a frequent visitor to Bisbee and the
Copper Queen. He befriended Hutchison and eventually partnered with developer Ed
Smart in his real estate ventures. Bisbee became a haven for artists and hippies
fleeing the larger cities of Arizona and California. Today, the historic city of
Bisbee is known as "Old Bisbee" and is home to a thriving downtown cultural
scene.
It's fascinating that in some parts of town they've merely paved over the wash
to build a street, with houses and other buildings constructed right up to the
edge of what was once the wash.
Now for the few days that we've been camped here, I've got to be honest with you,
the Dragoon Mountains behind me have left me absolutely fascinated. Not only
is this western slope of the Dragoons visually striking, but according to my
topo maps it looks like there was a lot of mining activity that took place in
those mountains years ago. So I want to head up there and do a little bit of
off-roading and see if we can find some remnants of those old mines.
We're continuing up Middlemarch Road past camp up towards Middlemarch Pass,
where we're already spotting tailings piles and other evidence of past mining
activity throughout the Dragoon Mountains.
At the bottom of the east side of the pass, we'll fork left into Middlemarch
Canyon, and drive up the wash to try to find some ruins on our topo map. The
trail, however, is quickly deteriorating.
The rough trail, however, has paid off by delivering us to some ruins of what
looks to have been a small milling operation for ore from the numerous
nearby mines.
So we're really hope that you've enjoyed coming along with us to check out Bisbee
and the Dragoon Mountains of southeastern Arizona.
We're about ready to get packed up and head off to the southwest side of Tucson,
where we're going to meet up with a fellow YouTuber and prepare for your
next week's episode of Grand Adventure. So if you're not yet a Grand Adventurer,
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