A color postcard of an aerial view of Lowell and Warren, showing the Number Seven Dump. The front caption reads: “Lowell - Bisbee, Arizona”. The back caption reads: “LAVENDER PIT & COPPER MILL / Bisbee- Lowell, Arizona. / Operated by Phelps Dodge Corporation, this Copper Pit and Mill are where once stood many homes and business buildings. Highway 80 had to be re-routed to make room for the operation.” The postcard is unused and was published by Petley Studios, Phoenix, Arizona. June Schuab Collection.

The Lavender Pit was named after Phelps Dodge vice president and general manager Harrison M. Lavender. Work in the pit began in 1951, and it was dedicated in 1954. Phelps Dodge invested $25,000,000 ($260,548,076.92 in 2021) in developing the Lavender with the hope that it would produce 38,000 tons on copper on a yearly basis by 1955. Among the buildings that were relocated during the expansion, was the office building of the Shattuck and Denn Mining Company. Moving the 300-ton brick structure was done with great care and at a snail’s pace, moving a single foot every ten minutes. The office was the last structure moved, and it’s new home lay 3,000 feet from its original location. The moving company’s owner, R.C. Burke, noted that though if not the largest building that he ever moved but it was the most difficult job due to Bisbee’s hilly terrain. In the move, one hundred homes were transferred from the Johnson Addition and other areas to Saginaw. In total, 250 homes and 20 businesses had to make way for the expanding pit. In January 1959, Walter C. Lawson announced that the 155 acre, 300 feet deep pit would receive a $5,000,000 dollar expansion. In comparison to the Sacramento Pit, the Lavender used electric powered shovels which were four times larger than the old steam powered ones. The rail track based ore cars were replaced by trucks with a capacity from 35 and 65 tons. After twenty-four years, mining in the Lavender Pit came to an end in 1975. In October 1977, George Nellis, a security guard at the Duval Pit Mine in Tucson, made the proposal of utilizing the Lavender Pit to build a terraced retirement community housing 100,000 people. Though the idea never came to fruition, retirees were a factor in sustaining Bisbee after the end of mining. The Lavender Pit remains a stark reminder of industrial might of mining companies to permanently alter a natural landscape. At the end, the Pit reached a size of covering 300 acres and reached the depth of 900 feet, ten times larger than the former Sacramento Pit. In the hunt for copper, 351 million tons of rock removed, producing 600,000 tons of copper. - Warren, named after the prospector George Warren, is the first planned suburb in Arizona and was built as part of the city beautiful movement with Vista park for recreation and the modern amenities of water, sewer, and gas lines. The city beautiful movement began to fight back against the overcrowded and unsanitary conditions plaguing America’s cities during a period of rapid industrial growth. Warren was built to alleviate the overcrowding in Bisbee and to provide miners and their families with better accommodations and a space free from the constant smell and noise of the mining operations in Bisbee at the time. Warren was designed and planned in a fan shape to take advantage of the landscape’s natural drainage. Ground water pumped from the mines in the hunt for ore was utilized to water the trees, shrubs and other greenery of Warren. Walter Douglas built a stately home the Loma Linda still rests at the base of the Number Seven Dump.

2005.29.9