A black and white postcard circa November 1955 shows the entrance to the Brewery Building. The roof/dome of the Pythian Castle can be seen on the top right of the photo. The front caption at the bottom reads: “The Historic Old Brewery, Brewery Gulch, Bisbee, Arizona X428” The postcard is unused, and the publisher is unknown. Carl Sandquist Collection.

Brewery Gulch got its name due to Albert Sieber, a Swiss immigrant who built the first brewery in the gulch in a white adobe building. After he decided on the name, he gave out free alcohol to the residents to celebrate and a brawl eventually broke out. It should be noted that water was scarce in Bisbee before burro delivery and infrastructure development, so when the miners wanted to quench their thirst alcohol was often their main option. During Bisbee’s growth as a profitable mining camp, the Gulch came to host fifteen saloons. Those establishments along with a handful of houses of prostitution gave a area a sordid reputation. The Copper Queen Mining Company wanted to attract more reliable, family-oriented workers instead of the transient miners who wandered from mine to mine. So after the formation of City Council, several ordinances were put in place to end the worse of the Gulch’s vices. One of the most notable establishments in Brewery Gulch was The Brewery that was built in 1905 by Swiss entrepreneur Joseph Muheim. Despite the name, the building never housed a brewery outright instead three saloons and when the era of Prohibition was enforced in Bisbee the building housed the Stock Exchange instead of alcohol. With his successful enterprises, he built a beautiful home on Youngblood Hill for his family who had immigrated to America after an agricultural crisis in Switzerland that destroyed farmers livelihood. On September 1st, the Muheim house was entered in the National Register of Historic Places, the first home in Bisbee to do so. After the Bisbee Council on the Arts and Humanities restored the building and interior to be a glimpse in time to the towns heyday. In 1980, it opened as a museum as the Muheim Heritage House.

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