Morenci Copper/Gold Mine

Our day-trip this week was north on AZ 191 to Morenci mine.  Who knew in this area there were so many mines…  There are copper mines in Miami, AZ, Safford, AZ and Morenci, AZ.  There is also a copper mine in Silver City, NM which is not far from the Morenci mine.

The mine in Morenci is the largest open-pit copper mine (stretching over 50 square miles) in the Northern Hemisphere!  Who would have thought in Arizona there existed this kind of ‘royalty’, or that AZ grew cotton either.  You just never know what kind of information we’ll find out while day-tripping…

Our drive wound through hills and valleys with more cactus than trees, more desert landscape than fertile land, and MORE ROCKS to get excited about, yet not quite as magnificent as the Chiricahua National Monument. The highway was paved and a quick 45 minute ride, if you don’t count the photo stops.  Just before Morenci was the town of Clifton which held a lot of mining history.

The Morenci Mine was originally founded by William Church in 1881. William Church convinced Phelps Dodge to invest in his copper mine in the Arizona Territory.  It was a smart investment because the mountains around present-day Clifton and Morenci contain some of the richest copper deposits in the world.  The timing couldn’t have been better because Thomas Edison’s light bulb made copper a hot commodity.

The early days of Morenci mining were underground.  Copper ore was mined with pick-ax and shovels and hauled from the mine in ore cars by mules and baby gauge steam locomotives with rails 20 inches apart.

By the late 1920’s, high-grade copper was becoming harder to find.  Like most industries, mining suffered from the great economic depression.  In 1932 copper prices fell so low, the Morenci mine closed.

In 1937, the mine re-opened as an open pit operation.  This marks the beginning of the present-day Morenci mine.

The town of Clifton lies just before Morenci and is aptly named for the ‘cliffs’ that surround the city.  One cliff in town hosts flags from different parts of the world.

Along main street in Clifton is a museum of sorts; the baby gauge steam locomotive (pictured above), a jail in one of the cliffs, an impressive arch to a home, an old Bodhi-type tree, and a historical district complete with many run-down, caved-in building from the 1800’s.

As we traveled up and through the canyon to Morenci we were awed by the sheer size of the operation. Parts of the mine look like the beginnings of a pyramid, other parts look like a giant sand box complete with Tonka toy trucks (very similar to the ones my son used to play with – back in the day).

The town of Morenci is among the last “company towns” left in America. Home for many of the mining employees, the town moved to its present location in 1967.  The old town site had to be moved to make way for expansion of mining operations.

There exists, we are told, a road that winds around and through the whole operation; yet, we both felt a bit uneasy about being any closer to “that very deep hole in the ground”!  So we skirted around the perimeter and then turned toward home.

On the return trip we decided to take the Black Hills National Back Country Byway an ‘unpaved’ adventure through time and history.  Stay tuned for the next post coming next week…