AZ Trip #4: Welcome to Bisbee; The Great Bisbee Deportation

Dan standing near old miner's cars

Dan using a Miners Elevator

In blog #4 of my trip to southern Arizona, Dan and I drove to Bisbee, Arizona. Today I'll tell you about the town, what made it famous, and the famous "deportation of 1917." 


THE COPPER QUEEN PLAZA - A small plaza near the main street of Bisbee had some old mining equipment, so we stopped to take several pictures. When we take you down into a copper mine in a future blog, you'll notice it was too dark to see any equipment.   .


WHAT IS BISBEE? - Bisbee is a city in the Mule Mountains of southeast Arizona. Both the Bisbee Mining &and  Historical Museum and the Bisbee Restoration Museum chronicle the city’s copper-mining past. The vast Queen Mine offers underground tours. Homes that once belonged to miners run up Tombstone Canyon from Old Bisbee, the historic town center.

A residential gate

CLOSE TO THE MEXICAN BORDER - The Mexican border at Naco is 11 miles (18 km) south of the center of Bisbee.

WHAT MADE BISBEE FAMOUS? It's a mining town!  Mining for copper and silver back in the 1880s is what the town was built around, similar to Tombstone to the north of Bisbee.  

Dan and some mining equipment 

Copper Queen Plaza

WHAT WAS THE GREAT BISBEE DEPORTATION? - The Bisbee Deportation was the illegal kidnapping and deportation of about 1,300 striking mine workers, their supporters, and citizen bystanders by 2,000 members of a deputized posse, who arrested these people beginning on July 12, 1917. 


The action was orchestrated by Phelps Dodge (who owned and managed the mines), the major mining company in the area, which provided lists of workers and others who were to be arrested in Bisbee, Arizona, to the Cochise County sheriff, Harry C. Wheeler. 

Dodge and Wheeler conspired to get rid of any miners striking for higher pay... and they did.

The striking workers were arrested and held at a local baseball park before being loaded onto cattle cars and deported 200 miles (320 km) to Tres Hermanas in New Mexico. 

The 16-hour journey was through desert without food and with little water. Once unloaded, the deportees, most without money or transportation, were warned against returning to Bisbee.


WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DEPORTEES? TO THE CROOKED MINE OWNER AND SHERIFF? The Governor of New Mexico, in consultation with President Woodrow Wilson, provided temporary housing for the deportees. A presidential mediation commission investigated the actions in November 1917, and in its final report, described the deportation as "wholly illegal and without authority in law, either State or Federal."[1] Nevertheless, no individual, company, or agency was ever convicted in connection with the deportations.



NEXT: The Ghost in the Copper Queen Hotel