A black and white postcard of the Calumet & Arizona smelter. The bottom caption reads “Calumet Smelter Douglas, Ariz.” The postcard is unused and published by United Art Publishing Company New York City J.C. Wanton, News Dealer. Francis Edward collection.

The Calumet & Arizona Smelter was built in Douglas in 1902, two years before the Copper Queen Smelter. Douglas townsite began in an area that had access to water and plenty of affordable land. The site was originally called “black water” due to the foul smell of the water, that characteristic also lent to the name of Douglas’s sister town across the border “Agua Prieta”. Established in 1901, Douglas was incorporated on May 15th 1905. Calumet & Arizona Mining Company purchased 160 acres and built their Smelter to process the ores from the Irish Mag mine. On June 2nd, 1913, Sarah Greenway, the sister of John C. Greenway lit a fire in the new 3,000-ton smelter at the time it was the largest and most modern of smelters in the United States. Before being taken over by Copper Queen Consolidated, the Calumet Smelter saw a number of improvements. In 1912 reverberatory furnaces replaced the older blast furnaces and in 1927, a 350-foot smelter stack was built. In 1940, nine years after Calumet & Arizona became the Douglas Reduction Works, a new 572-foot smelter stack was completed. The Douglas Reduction Works was protested by some Bisbee and Douglas residents who founded G.A.S.P. or the Groups Against Smelter Pollution in 1984. They worked to document the negative effect the smelter’s pollution had on their families and communities The smelter was shut down in January 1987 due to new environmental regulations. Phelps Dodge felt that the expense of installing new equipment to reduce the sulfur dioxide emissions was too much for what the Douglas smelter was worth. The last smelter closed and resulted in a loss 347 jobs and the 9-million-dollar payroll for the Douglas employees. It meant a $170,000 loss in property taxes for the town. In January 1991 the smelter stacks, which had been so pivotal to Douglas’s economy for eighty-nine years, were torn down.

1980.65.68