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BISBEE, ARIZONA—
Former
ore train now carries tourists! |
Mining ended
in Bisbee back in the early 1970's, but thanks to the enterprising efforts
of the town's mayor, the Copper Queen Mine is still generating revenue
and employing miners. These days, however, there's no digging and blasting.
Instead, the miners take visitors inside one of the tunnels on an old
train rebuilt to accommodate passengers instead of ore. It's a popular
trip. Over 50,000 people a year don yellow slickers, hard hats, and battery-powered
lamps to enter the mine for a chance to learn what it was like to work
there from people who know firsthand.
The Copper
Queen's lode was mined for nearly a century, from 1877 to 1975. During
that time, the mine produced more than eight billion pounds of copper.
In addition, substantial quantities of gold, silver, lead, and zinc were
extracted from the ore, making the Queen one of the richest mines in Arizona.
Juan regales visitors with a lifetime's worth of
stories |
Our guide,
Juan, spent most of his career working in Bisbee mines. As we rode the
train into the cool—the temperature is a constant 47° Fahrenheit—tunnel,
he regaled us with personal anecdotes from his colorful past. At one stop,
he instructed us to train our lights on a wall rigged with more than a
dozen sticks of dynamite as he explained how miners used fuses of different
lengths to create sequential explosions. "Then we would light them,
and go and stand behind another wall," he said, summing up the extent
of their safety precautions. As he continued to describe a day in the
life of a Bisbee miner, it became clear that blasting was by no means
the only perilous task. Challenges from cave-ins to bad air quality meant
that miners risked their lives on a daily basis.
After viewing
ore samples, drills, elevator cages, ore cars, and even a toilet car, we
re-emerged from the tunnel aboard the train and rode back to the visitors'
center. Well worth the price of admission, the Queen Mine Underground Tour
had given us a vivid glimpse into southern Arizona's rugged past and the
continuing source of Bisbee's prosperity.
Entrance to the Copper Queen Mine
Back in the good old days--horse-drawn mine train |
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