A sepia toned, black and white Bisbee panorama postcard taken from Chihuahua Hill, circa 1907. Photograph taken by Graves. The back of the postcard is dated December 7, 1907. Brewery Gulch, the Pythian Castle, Central School, the Copper Queen Consolidated Mining Company General Office Building, the Copper Queen Warehouse, are among the buildings that are visible. The postcard was sent by A. Roy Tietsort to Mrs. Mary B. Tietsort 175 - 24th St. Detroit, Mich. The message on the back in ink reads: “Better than any news I have yet sent you of Bisbee it takes in more. You can see a few of the hills and get an idea -- to how the town is laid out. The hills entirely surround the city. The trains follow the valleys in coming into town. One get a magnificent view of the place if he has the nerve to climb there is one place called "Castle Rock" which is easy to ascent by a long roadway on one side. The view from that is fine. These hills are the tail end of the Sierra Nevadas. Lovingly, Roy" The postcard was printed on Kruxo paper. Lynn Nadeau 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.

2018.40.14