This mural by Judy Perry introduces stairway No 7, a mere 96 steps.
The Bisbee 1000 is coming soon and we hope you’ll plan an extra day in your schedule to enjoy one of our Lavender Jeep Tours, where we’ll do all the climbing for you!
If you don’t know about it, the Bisbee 1000 is a 5-kilometer run — with 1,000 of our stairs interspersed along the route! This year (2015), it’s held on Saturday, Oct. 17. (It’s always the third weekend in October. That’s the same weekend as Tombstone’s Helldorado Days, a three-day event, so if you’re driving all the way down from the Valley of the Sun, you can make it a twofer. But make your lodging reservations now to ensure a spot; here are links.)
Christa has been playing music around historic Bisbee for many months now, coming out most days and staying as long as her daughter, Isabella, will maintain her good attitude. She does remarkably well for an 18-month old.
She arrived in Bisbee in January and does “busking” as her living, playing mostly cover tunes. She says she enjoys country and folk music. Though she has written many of her own songs, she hasn’t been doing this of late and doesn’t yet have her own album available.
If you see her on the street while you’re walking around, take a break and enjoy her music (she takes requests) and drop some encouragement in her guitar case.
One of the things I like about giving tours of Bisbee for Lavender Jeep Tours is that I’m constantly learning more about the town. Just as when I dig into old newspapers and other historical sources.
A young Jeff Milton
During the Greater Bisbee tour and the Mining Landscape tour, I drive visitors down Cole Avenue, past Greenway School and the Greenway House and talk a bit about Jack and Isabella Greenway. I know quite a bit about Jack, the engineer and manager of the Calumet & Arizona Mining Co. interests, but I did not know that he was a good friend of famous lawman Jeff Milton. Tonight I was poring over old newspapers searching for information about Willis Woods, an escapee from the Tombstone jail and a “general bad man.”
More bad men
I found linked to him another bad man named Colney Musgrave, more of a wannabe bad man, but brother of George Musgrave, one-time member of the Black Jack Ketchum gang, which from the late 1890s till about 1910 plundered at will in New Mexico and Arizona, as well as some in Texas and elsewhere. Continue reading “The Jeff Milton – Jack Greenway connection”
Patron Jim Warne presents Don Cox’ bronze sculpture of George Warren to Gov. Jan Brewer on statehood day (Feb. 14) 2013.
It’s hard to believe it’s been 137 years since Bisbee’s “discovery.” Originally known as Mule Gulch, after the main east-west canyon, the area was frequented by Apaches and the soldiers chasing them, but it wasn’t till the summer of ’77 that someone found something worthwhile. Those folks grubstaked George Warren to come back and file more claims, which he did, though not to the benefit of the original discoverers.
This is the sculpture at the Cochise County Board of Supervisors’ office, if you want to stop by and take a look.
George had a long and colorful history in Mule Gulch and (after 1880) Bisbee until his death in 1893. A drunk he was throughout this time, but a great story-teller and a legend in his own time. The most colorful George Warren tale took place in Charleston, near Tombstone, where he bet he could outrun a horse. He bet his interest in the Copper Queen mining claim — and lost. Had he won, he would have gotten a pretty fine horse.
George Warren fares better in death
George did much better after he died — sounds like an artist — it seems. His iconic photo, taken by the locally famous C.S. Fly, became the model for the miner on the Arizona State Seal, and a monument of some stature was erected at Evergreen Cemetery. The mining district at Bisbee was named for him, as was the community planned and built nearby after the turn of the century.
And more recently, Bisbee-born sculptor Don Cox was commissioned by another Bisbee native, Jim Warne, to create a newer monument to the man. Two copies exist, one at the Arizona capitol (which also has George, in the State Seal, permanently inlaid into the floor) and one at the Cochise County offices in the San Jose area. Continue reading “George Warren still defines Bisbee, 137 years later”
One aspect of Bisbee which I point out to our riders is the proliferation of yellow sandbags around town, with an explanation of the history and process.
Bisbee had a smelter between 1880 and 1903, located where the Queen Mine Tour is today. As well as putting out gases, it emitted particulates. (Later, smelters would be able to install electrolytic precipitators to removed these solids from the gas stream, both because of their value and for health considerations.) Some of these particulates were heavy metals, such as lead, and some of them settled into the local soil.
Smelter emissions weren’t the only cause of lead in the soil. House paint used to contain lead as well, and every time someone scraped the paint off into the yard, the lead remained in the soil. Nevertheless, a few years ago, Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. began its local soil program, testing all of the soil in greater Bisbee. Where metals were found to be above a certain threshhold, the company has dug up the soil, disposed of it, replaced it with clean soil and planted it to prevent erosion. Continue reading “What are all the yellow sandbags around Bisbee for?”
