A color postcard of the Bank of Bisbee, Hospital, YMCA, Copper Queen Store, the library and post office. Note the flags which have been colored into the picture. The front caption on the bottom left reads “352. Portion of the Business Section, Bisbee, Arizona”. The back caption on the top left reads: “Portion of the Business Section Bisbee, Arizona. At the head of Bisbee Canyon known in the early days as Mule Gulch, where it meets Tombstone Canyon and Brewery Gulch, at an altitude of 5200 feet is Bisbee with a population of about 16,000 presenting a scene of hustle and business activity surpassing any other City in the Great Southwest.” The postcard is unused and was published by Curt Teich, Chicago, Illinois and Harry Herz, Phoenix, Arizona. Edward Francis Collection.

Bisbee’s downtown district was the economic heart of the city. Multiple shops, hotels restaurants, churches, library and post office provided rural Bisbee with a metropolitan lifestyle as comfortable as any bustling city back east. The most prominent among the buildings constructed were the Phelps Dodge offices for the Copper Queen Consolidated Mining Company, the Phelps Dodge Mercantile, Copper Queen Hotel, the Copper Queen Hospital the YMCA, the YWCA, Presbyterian Church, Central School and the Bisbee High School. Of the buildings lost to time, the original Williams Douglas House, The Bessemer Hotel and the Orpheum Theater were among those demolished. The area survived devastating fires and monsoon floods that tore the district apart in the early decades, testing the mettle of its residents. As the copper ore had yet to give out, they still had the resources and determination to rebuild the town. Whereas countless other Arizonan boom town went bust and vanished into ghost towns, Bisbee remains as the nature of copper mining allowed it to do so. Visitors from all over the nation can come and appreciate Bisbee’s role in providing the metal that formed the backbone of our modern era.

1980.65.21