November 8 - 14, 2017:
We are staying at the Queen Mine RV Park on the hilltop next to the Copper Queen Mine overlooking Bisbee. It’s a great campground as its walking distance to downtown. We are here for a week and this is our last campground, #61, before our winter layover in Tucson. Bisbee has that southwest liberal “be kind” vibe similar to Tucson that appeals to us. I easily fit in here, there are many bearded gray haired ponytail guys walking around town.
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| View from the campsite looking towards downtown |
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| The campground from this vantage point appears to be in the mine |
Bisbee started when Lt. Anthony Rucker of the 6th US Calvary led an army patrol into the Mule mountains in 1877 hunting for renegade Apaches. They found no Apaches but Jack Dunn, a scout for the patrol did find traces of copper in the rocks. Rucker and Dunn were unable to go to Tucson to file a mining claim, so they hired George Warren to go and file the claim in their names. George did go to Tucson and file the claim but did so in his own name and it therefore became known as the Warren Mining District. George being an alcoholic and a drifter soon squandered away his 1/9th ownership of the soon to be fabulously rich Copper Queen Mine on a bet that he could outrun a horse in a foot race. Lt. Rucker didn’t fare much better, he drowned a year later in a flash flood.
(In researching this I find several slightly different versions of this, not unusual, who really knows?)
Bisbee was running out of living space and in danger of being swallowed up by the Copper Queen Mine, so a new planned development, Warren, was established a few miles away with better housing and amenities for the mine workers. There was even a trolley line running from old Bisbee and the Copper Queen Mine to Warren. The new Bisbee area has some attractive houses, in particular the “Douglas Mansion”, but there isn't much of interest for the tourist there other than the Warren Ballpark, one of the oldest in the US.
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| The Douglas Mansion |
The town of Lowell is on the other side of the Lavender Mining Pit from old Bisbee. It was originally a separate town but is now part of Bisbee. It is the site of the "Breakfast Club", where I must go on every visit to Bisbee. It's a town that remains stuck in an earlier time period, relatively unchanged, that appears to be primarily owned by someone who made much money with the "Broken Spoke Saloon" chain of motorcycle bars.
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Lowell has a bit of a "time travel" feel to it
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The "Broken Spoke Party Squad" keeps the peace here
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Nostalgic old gas station
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Memories of a 55 Chevy station wagon like this one that I once owned
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| The Breakfast Club |
We usually go to the Saturday Bisbee Farmers Market when we come here, it’s a very good one. Cowboy / Country musician extraordinaire, Johnny Bencomo, is still playing at the market with his 24 string guitar. He is perfect for the Farmers Market crowd and seems to know many there by first name. We have seen him several times at Desert Trails RV Park where we winter in Tucson. He also plays in Bisbee at the Copper Queen Hotel on Monday and Tuesday nights where I see him once again. He is a real historian on country & western music and the real deal as far as a singing cowboy!
After the mines closed in 1947 most of the residents of Bisbee left and the town was on its way to becoming a ghost town. That’s when the hippie crowd moved in buying up the very cheap property, rebuilding, opening up shops, art galleries and developing the current tourist trade. While nearby Tombstone calls itself, “the town too tough to die” , Bisbee with its free spirit artistic mentality takes pride in calling itself “the town too high to care”. It’s refreshing to be in a place like this, but I’m not optimistic that this will continue after the older crowd dies off.
A nice appearing woman outside the Library starts telling me about someone on Facebook accusing her of waving a gun around in the post office as she was getting something out of her purse. She said she's been living too long in this town and she is sounding a little irrational and I’m just wanting to distance myself from her. There are some very strange people around here.
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That's the classic downtown Bisbee view with the "B" visible on Chihuahua Hill
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| The Bisbee tourism bus |
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They call this statue the "Iron Man" but
since this is a Copper mining town and
it's copper plated, I call it the "Copper Man"
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I always admire the arts works on the back alleys
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| Another classic Bisbee view |
Much of the Bisbee sits precariously on hillsides and the houses are connected to the nearest street with long steep stairways. Years ago someone came up with the novel idea to organize a stair race which has over the years become the popular “Bisbee 1000 stair race event”. A satellite (Google Earth) view of Bisbee is pretty crazy looking.
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Bisbee1000 sign, most of the original wooden steps were
replaced as a WPA project in the 1930's.
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| Google Earth view of Bisbee hints at its rugged location |
Twinkles is making an attempt to do all 1,000 steps of the Bisbee stair climb route. She couldn’t have done this last year as she had much knee pain, but this year after losing some weight has almost no knee pain and is doing the steps really well. Now, I am shamed into doing them as well and some of these long steep stairs are wicked. We will not be entering the competition however.
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A view form one of the stairways
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Good advise for stair climbers
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There is much beauty on these stairs
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The steps take you practically through
peoples yards
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| An interesting sign on a retaining wall |
We take a hike up to the top of Youngblood Hill where the shrine is located, it’s sort of an annual pilgrimage. It’s a steep climb on the city streets getting getting to the trailhead at the “famous chicken house”, then another steep climb to the shrine. The view from there is great and if you continue to the next hill top you can look down into the Lavender Pit Mine, it’s even better.
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The view from the hillsides are special
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The trailhead to the cross, the chicken house is behind the truck
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Twinkles gazing out into the mountains
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That's an inspiring view
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The rocks are beautiful too
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A portion of the shrine, it's heavenly !
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The Side Pony festival is much more organized this year with a schedule listing all the bands and where and when they are playing. It a crazy event with (94) bands, mostly Arizona bands, not exactly household names, coming to Bisbee for three days of music at (15) venues around town. The bands play 45 minute sets and then rotate to another venue during the day. You get quite a bit of exercise if you jump around to multiple venues during the day. Most of the decadence occurs on Bisbee’s renown “Brewery Avenue” especially near the St. Elmo Bar. Most of the venues are close by so it is easy to make the rounds, listen from outside for a minute, if you like what you hear, go inside. The best thing is that it is a totally free event.
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| Side Pony Poster |
A favorite blues guy was “Rocking Chair”, Gene Moran, who is in a wheel chair and is accompanied by another good player on a old resonator guitar. I was mesmerized and inspired by the joyful look on his face when he played and he actually had a good blues voice, I bought his CD for that alone.
Sitting alone at the Stock Exchange one night, a young woman sat down next to me and asked me about the band that has just finished playing which she had missed. She figured anyone wearing a hat like mine, would know if it was good or bad. After giving her the lowdown, she invited me to get my face painted and join the “Tribe”, I declined, but was kind of sorry afterwards.
On another night in another bar an attractive young woman approached me with a smile and set a shot glass in front of me and then walked away. Maybe age does have some rewards ?
I have to admit that as idiotic as it is, I still love the deafening sound of a gyrating, head thrashing hard rock guitar band like “Stinkeye” in the back room at St Elmo’s Bar. Also the more thoughtful psychedelic flavored sound of the band, “Parlor Birds”, at the Stock Exchange Bar.
I had seen singer-songwriter Robert Kuhl, from Houston Texas, the week before in Silver City, New Mexico. I then saw him several times over the weekend, the last time developed into a bit of a jam session with other musicians after his set at the Silver King Hotel. Twinkles got a chuckle when as we were walking in town, he passed us in a car and said out the window, "Hey Dude". He told a story about falling in love in Bisbee on a previous visit, in a parking lot, how it was so beautiful but ended so badly which related to a book he later read about love in our modern society that served as an intro for a song. I was quite impressed with the poetic story.
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He has a true gypsy spirit and everywhere I went
around town I kept running into him
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A very powerful sounding rock band, “Larkspurs”, fronted by a dynamic Violin playing young woman was very impressive at the Copper City Saloon. I looked around the room at one point and everyone was watching in rapt attention to her playing.
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| The Larkspurs had a unique sound |
The “Auld Lang Syne” band from Utica, NY were especially good and for the last song they brought their three young cute children up to join them in a song. The onlookers loved it, everyone’s cameras came out. I'm quite sure these kids will be musicians themselves in a few years.
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They were very good
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Another favorite band was “Quinn and the Confluence” who weren't so exciting to look at but were very good musically.
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| Quinn and the Confluence |
There was a folk musician, Joe Quinn, from Glasgow, UK who was very good but the couple seated in front of me were having trouble understanding him due to his a strong accent. He was joking with them about the communications breakdown.
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| I had the feeling that Joe Quinn has seen it all |
I thought that the front man of the "Manic Monkeys" band had real potential, he had the voice, the moves, the looks and attitude to be a star.
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Star quality ?
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| It's been a very strange trip indeed ! |
The travel year ends on a high note for me, it's been a good ride.
Our next and final stop is Desert Trails RV Park in Tucson;
Twinkles and Slick
