A color postcard of the entrance to Brewery Gulch and the Orpheum Theater. The front caption reads: “Brewery Gulch, Bisbee, Arizona. The postcard is unused and was published by the Albertype Company, Brooklyn, New York.

The Orpheum Theater was one of the business ventures built by Joseph Muheim, a Swiss immigrant who came to Bisbee in 1888. The theater marked the entrance of Brewery Gulch and was managed by C.J. Alden. The venue housed a number of different plays and musical performances. Among the more famous performers that graced the Orpheum’s stage was Fatty Arbuckle performing vaudeville in the early part of his career in 1909. Later on, Paramount films were shown in the Orpheum. After the theater closed, the building was turned into a 30-car capacity garage. Among the auto businesses based there over the years was the Muheim Motor Company, the Brophy Garage and the Goar Service & Supply Company. The building was eventually demolished, and several trees were planted transforming the area into Goar Park. 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 Humanties 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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