A black and white photo postcard of the early 1940s shows the Copper Queen Hotel and the entrance to the Brewery Gulch. There are many signs, including Sears and Western Union. The front caption in white at the bottom reads: “Copper Queen Hotel, Bisbee Arizona C-690.” The postcard is unused, and the publisher is unknown. Carl Sandquist Collection.

The Copper Queen Hotel Construction began in 1898 and was opened in February 21, 1902. The hotel was built by the Copper Queen Consolidated Mining Company as a retreat for investors and was designed by the architectural firm Van Vleck and Goldsmith from New York. It was praised for its efficient design for being the most modern hotel in the southwest. The hotel is an example of the Italianate style and among the hotel’s amenities were a buffet, ladies parlor, and barbershop; it was built with forty-four rooms and two dining rooms and the cost of $100,000 (about $3,370,000 in 2021.) Charles Rouser served as a capable manager; he had plenty of experience from previous employment at the Columbia Club in Indianapolis. His stay was brief, and Tom Whitehead took over soon after, White transformed the hotel’s dining room into a round-the-clock-cafe. Management was then turned over to Charles Rouser’s son, Edward Rouser until 1906 when he and his newly wed bride were tragically killed in the April 18th earthquake in San Francisco while on their honeymoon. The original building started off with two square towers book-ending the building. In 1940, a third tower was added in the center for the installation of an elevator. Today the Copper Queen Hotel remains open and holds the record for the oldest continually operating hotel in Arizona. - 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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