A yellow tinted, black and white postcard of an aerial view of Bisbee. The front caption on the bottom reads: “Bisbee, Ariz. from Higgins Hill” The postcard was postmarked Bisbee-March 18, 1908 3 PM and was sent by A F Murphy-Bisbee, Arizona Box 220 to Miss Margaret Henderson Room 606 Keith Building Phila PA. The message in ink on the front reads: “This place don’t look like Phila lord, and you bet I know it too. The Climate is the only thing agreeable out here.” The message on the back in ink reads: “Mar 18-08 I have been trying to find a man with lots of money but as yet I haven’t succeeded. There are lots of them out here but don’t want to keep anybody but themselves I am sorry that I can’t help you out. I might after a while get someone.” The postcard’s publisher is unknown and was sent with a green one cent Benjamin Franklin stamp. 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.

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