"Like a band of Gypsies we go down the highway ~~ We're the best of friends ~~ Insisting that the world keep turnin' our way…" Willie Nelson – Johnny Cash
We took a day trip to Bisbee, about 100 miles southeast of Tucson. Bisbee was founded in 1880 as a copper, gold, and silver mining town. The huge open pit copper mines are still visible on the edge of town. But the Bisbee copper ore was of poor quality and by the 1970s mining was no longer financially viable and the last mine closed. The miners left town and property values plummeted. But poor artists and hippies discovered they could buy a house for almost nothing and so Bisbee was reborn as an art and tourist center, as it remains today.
The old part of Bisbee is built upon steep hills on either side of a deep gulch. We wanted to explore the interesting old buildings but we didn’t want to drive on the treacherous narrow streets and we definitely didn’t want to climb the steep hills on foot! So we took a 1-hour tour of the town on the back of a golf cart. Our tour guide, a Bisbee native, was very informative and we got to see many interesting homes and commercial buildings, so it was worth the expense.
Bisbee, AZ
Bisbee
Bisbee
Museum in Bisbee
Glass art
Lots of wall art in Bisbee
Yard art in Bisbee
Yard art
Mosaic wall art in Bisbee
Mosaic wall art in Bisbee
Wall art
View of Bisbee
View of Bisbee from the top of a hill
There is an annual marathon in Bisbee where runners go up and down the 1000+ stairs in Bisbee. ” Bisbee’s Heritage Stairs One of Bisbee’s most magnificent architectural achievements are the countless concrete stairs that cling to the steep canyonsides Lack of flat land and the need for miners and bosses to reside near their workings led to the construction of hundreds of hillside homes beginning in the late 1870s. The owners and occupants of the irregularly shaped, sometimes nearly vertical, parcels had to develop dependable routes to reach their properties. The sturdy early Bisbeeite initially relied on precipitous trails featuring switchbacks. However, these winding inclines soon proved impractical as they were difficult to maintain and became slippery in wet weather. Next, the clever canyonside dwellers constructed a network of wooden stairs, often resembling ladders! The wooden stairs provided straight up-and-down access to the dwellings from the canyon floor. This, however, changed in the 1930s. Many of the major concrete stairways we still see today were constructed during the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration, one of the Federal Government’s back-to-work programs. ‘WPA’ was often pressed into the concrete or tagged on an embedded bronze plaque. It is still common for nice houses to be situated on a parcel that is accessible only by climbing 100 or 200 steps to reach the front door! Come explore our stairs…there are thousands of them!”
