Miami is a town in Gila County, Arizona, United States. Miami is a classic Western copper boom-town. Miami's old downtown has been partly renovated, and the Bullion Plaza Museum features the cultural, mining and ranching history of the Miami area.
Ajo is an unincorporated community in Pima County, Arizona, United States. It is the closest community to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The population was 3,039 at the 2020 census. Ajo is located on State Route 85 just 43 miles (69 km) from the Mexican border.
Phelps Dodge Corporation was an American mining company founded in 1834 as an import-export firm by Anson Greene Phelps and his two sons-in-law William Earle Dodge, Sr. and Daniel James. The latter two ran Phelps, James & Co., the part of the organization based in Liverpool, England. The import-export firm at first exported United States cotton from the Deep South to England and imported various metals to the US needed for industrialization. With the expansion of the Western frontier in North America, the corporation acquired mines and mining companies, including the Copper Queen Mine in Cochise County, Arizona and the Dawson, New Mexico coal mines. It operated its own mines and acquired railroads to carry its products. By the late 19th century, it was known as a mining company.
ASARCO is a mining, smelting, and refining company based in Tucson, Arizona, which mines and processes primarily copper. The company has been a subsidiary of Grupo México since 1999.
Freeport-McMoRan Inc., often called Freeport, is an American mining company based in the Freeport-McMoRan Center, in Phoenix, Arizona. The company is the world's largest producer of molybdenum, is a major copper producer and operates the world's largest gold mine, the Grasberg mine in Papua, Indonesia.
The Chino Mine, also known as the Santa Rita mine or Santa Rita del Cobre, is an open-pit porphyry copper mine located in the town of Santa Rita, New Mexico 15 miles (24 km) east of Silver City. The mine was started as the Chino Copper Company in 1909 by mining engineer John M. Sully and Spencer Penrose, and is currently owned and operated by Freeport-McMoRan Inc. subsidiaries. The area where the mine is located is at an average elevation of 5,699 feet (1,737 m).
Swansea is a ghost town in La Paz County in the U.S. state of Arizona. It was settled circa 1909 in what was then the Arizona Territory. It served as a mining town as well as a location for processing and smelting the copper ore taken from the nearby mines.
Ruby is a ghost town in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, United States. It was founded as a mining town in Bear Valley, originally named Montana Camp, so named because the miners were mining at the foot of Montana Peak.
In Arizona, copper mining has been a major industry since the 19th century. In 2007, Arizona was the leading copper-producing state in the country, producing 750 thousand metric tons of copper, valued at $5.54 billion. Arizona's copper production was 60% of the total for the United States. Copper mining also produces gold and silver as byproducts. Byproduct molybdenum from copper mining makes Arizona the nation's second-largest producer of that metal. Although copper mineralization was found by the earliest Spanish explorers of Arizona, the territory was remote, and copper could seldom be profitably mined and shipped. Early Spanish, Mexican, and American prospectors searched for gold and silver, and ignored copper. It was not until the completion of the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1876 that copper became broadly economic to mine and ship to market.
Sasco is a ghost town located in Pinal County, Arizona, west of Red Rock. Sasco, which is an acronym for the Southern Arizona Smelter Company, was a company town with a large smelter that served several mines. Once an impressive and little-known ghost town, today Sasco is a common sporting destination with shotgun shells, airsoft bb's, paintball splatter, and litter in the area.
The Copper Queen Mine was a copper mine in Cochise County, Arizona, United States. Its development led to the growth of the surrounding town of Bisbee in the 1880s. Its orebody ran 23% copper, an extraordinarily high grade. It was acquired by Phelps Dodge in 1885.
The New Cornelia mine is a currently inactive open-pit copper mine in Pima County, Arizona, United States. It was the only productive mine in the Ajo mining district, and is located just outside the town of Ajo, which was built as a company town to serve the New Cornelia mines. The roughly circular pit is one and a half miles across at its widest point, and 1,100 feet deep at the center. Although not generally regarded as a 'dam', the New Cornelia Mine Tailings is often cited as the largest dam structure in the United States with a volume of 7.4 billion cubic feet.
The El Paso and Southwestern Railroad began in 1888 as the Arizona and South Eastern Railroad, a short line serving copper mines in southern Arizona. Over the next few decades, it grew into a 1200-mile system that stretched from Tucumcari, New Mexico, southward to El Paso, Texas, and westward to Tucson, Arizona, with several branch lines, including one to Nacozari, Mexico. The railroad was bought by the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1924 and fully merged into its parent company in 1955. The EP&SW was a major link in the transcontinental route of the Golden State Limited.
Helvetia is a ghost town in Pima County, Arizona, United States that was settled in 1891 and abandoned in the early 1920s. Helvetia is an ancient name for Switzerland. Today, only the Ray Mine and cemetery are visitable, as the rest of the town has been fenced off due to active mining operations.
Harshaw is a ghost town in Santa Cruz County in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Arizona. The town was settled in the 1870s, in what was then Arizona Territory. Founded as a mining community, Harshaw is named after the cattleman-turned-prospector David Tecumseh Harshaw, who first successfully located silver in the area. At the town's peak near the end of the 19th century, Harshaw's mines were among Arizona's highest producers of ore, with the largest mine, the Hermosa, yielding approximately $365,455 in bullion over a four-month period in 1880.
The Morenci Mine is a large copper mine located near Morenci, Arizona, United States. Morenci represents one of the largest copper reserves in the United States and in the world, having estimated reserves of 3.2 billion tonnes (3.5×109 short tons) of ore grading 0.16% copper. It is located in Greenlee County, just outside the company town of Morenci and the town of Clifton. Freeport-McMoRan is the principal owner and, since 2016, Sumitomo Group has owned a 13% interest in the mine.
San Xavier is a populated place in Pima County, Arizona, United States, situated seventeen miles southwest of Tucson, and six miles northwest of Sahuarita. Originally a small silver mining camp from the 1880s, today San Xavier is little more than a collection of rural homes and partially abandoned mines. The ghost towns of Azurite and Mineral Hill were located about one mile north of San Xavier. Twin Buttes was five miles southeast.
Silver Bell is a ghost town in the Silver Bell Mountains in Pima County, Arizona, United States. The name "Silver Bell" refers to a more recent ghost town, which was established in 1954 and abandoned in 1984. The original town, established in 1904, was named "Silverbell" and abandoned in the early 1930s. Both towns were utilized and later abandoned due to the mining of copper in the area.
