Kiwis In Bisbee
Kiwis In Bisbee
An hour forty-minute drive from Phoenix, put these snowbirds in Tucson. We found so much to do in both locales and everything in between! Then on one fine day, we decided to drive a further hour forty minutes south and east of Tucson. We saw plenty of signage encouraging us to travel southwest to Nogales, Mexico, but resisted, and ended up driving to Bisbee, a mere twelve miles from the Mexican border. This old-time mining town is situated in a pass carved out of the Mule Mountains, which run north and south. The town itself runs northwest to southeast and very little of it is on the flat!
We knew ahead of time from our research that the historic town would have more visitors than parking spaces, so upon our arrival into town, we focused on car parking. We were fortunate to arrive at the Queen Mine carpark between their underground tours and scored the last parking space. From this lofty position we had a marvelous view of the town’s business district – Tombstone Canyon Road. Our stay at the mine was brief; just long enough to obtain tickets for one of the afternoon tours, and glean from the locals their suggestion for parking in town. We repositioned our car successfully and set out on foot.
The three narrow and winding streets in downtown Bisbee run parallel to one another and two are connected by a narrow, steep stairwell, which is beautifully adorned with murals. The sign posted at the base of the staircase reads, “Bisbee 1000 – The Great Stair Climb”. We used these stairs to keep from walking the entire town as we determined there was more to see than what we had time! Then I stumbled across in our walking tour a very old three-story wooden building, which stood out as being quite different from all the other sandstone structures in the street. It was quite large with verandah jutting out from each level and the building itself was sitting at the base of a steep hill. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief, just like one sees cartoon characters do in a dramatic fashion. Could it be that what I was looking at was a New Zealand flag flying under the Stars and Stripes? I dare not say anything until I was sure that it wasn’t the Australian flag; the only difference between the two country’s flags being just an additional red star on the Australian version. The wind unfurled the flag just enough for me to confirm it to be the kiwi flag! “What would that be doing here?”, I asked my wife.
There was no stopping me investigating this situation further. I spent nearly half my life down under and as a recently retired innkeeper, my curiosity was in overdrive! The signage on the building read, “The Inn at Castle Rock” and where there would normally be a handicap parking sign, instead was a sign that read, “Kiwi Parking Only”. Upon entering this quaint hotel, we met a lady, a local and longtime employee, who explained that we had just missed meeting the owner, Chris Brown. He and his wife had just recently returned from their trip to New Zealand and were now out restocking supplies. However, we had a great conversation with this gal and learned so much about the history of the inn and the Apache Springs Well.
It was 1877 when the Apache Springs Well was initially discovered, the only source of water in the area at that time. The Apache Indians showed Lieutenant Rucker and his small cavalry of men the natural spring at the base of what was known as Castle Rock. While the water source was important, Rucker soon spied traces of lead, silver and copper and dug out a mine on the spot. It became too much trouble for the miners to work at this location due to the springs continually flooding their mine, so they moved their copper mine elsewhere. Mining during the 1880’s brought people from all over the world to work here. While researching for my sequel, “The Gilded Age – A Novelization of the Life of John Hiram Beckley”, I’ve written detailed descriptions about the immigrant Irish miners and the harrowing effects of The Panic of 1893; our nation’s first full-fledged recession. With thousands of businesses across America closed and millions of people unemployed during this time in history, the rush of people west to Bisbee, Arizona to work in the mines makes perfect sense to me.
The inn was built in 1895 and owned by Bisbee’s mayor, John Joseph Muirhead. He designed it as a boarding house for all the miners who were flooding into town. Muirhead instinctively knew that his town needed a large boarding house along with a restaurant and that he needed to secure the only source of water in town, so he built his hotel around the well itself! Just right of the front desk, I found myself staring into a well that has a skeleton attempting to climb out, the water perhaps twenty-five feet below. And as if this isn’t quirky enough, I learned that from the three levels, the inn boasts no fewer than fourteen “themed rooms”, which guests either find either kicky or repulsive. The Inn at Castle Rock was run as a boarding house until the death of Muirhead in 1930, and then his wife carried on with the business until her death in 1948. By the 1980’s and despite the building being listed in the National Register of Historic Places, it was in serious disrepair. Chris Brown began his restoration project in 2009. Brown retained the narrow staircases, creaky floors and doors, and most importantly, the rooms’ original motif. The “Octagon Room”, situated on the top floor with its peaked roof, provides an incredible view of town in both directions. Guests today use the Octagon Room as a common area and it's a good location at night for viewing the Batman insignia, which is beamed on the rock face each night across the street.
We were told that some guests stay just for the thrill of spending a night in a haunted house. The Browns have not shied away from this claim but promote it by providing a registry book that guests can relay their supernatural experiences for others. The tale the locals tell is how on October 13, 1935, Mabel Watters, a 34-year-old married mother of two was passing by the inn on the opposite side of the street when she was shot in the neck, at the base of her brain, and was killed instantly. A guest was sitting on the balcony cleaning his rifle when it accidently fired the shot. Folks in their recounting of their ghost stories at the inn mention of a young lady searching for something or climbing into bed with them!
The Inn’s website states how the iconic building appealed so to the Brown’s, like it did to me, at first glance, and neither of us could walk away from it. And yet, our mining tour beckoned, so I had to bid our new-found friend at the front desk adieu, but not until a few innkeeper stories were shared between us!
At the entry way of the Queen Mine is a boulder on the lefthand side that provides a wee bit of history for their guests. The inscription explains how the rich copper mines transformed the town of Bisbee from a rough camp to one of the most cultured cities between St. Louis and San Francisco during its heyday, which was the early 1900’s; the town being incorporated in 1902. The Queen Mine existed from 1877 to 1975 when it was closed, but not before 8 billion pounds of copper had been extracted as well as gold, silver, lead and zinc. The Queen Mine was one of the most productive mining districts in the world. Over the entry of the gift shop, which looked as though one would be entering a mineshaft, the insignia read, “Mule Pass Tunnel – 1958 – 14' high” and it showed an image of a team of mules pulling a couple of coal carts.
So, before boarding our single-seat train, all of us in a row, we had to don blue hard hats, high viz vests and a weighted lamp that wrapped around our neck. Once seated on the yellow padded rubber seat and with our feet safely up on the steel footrest, our guide, Neal, introduced himself and said that if you don’t like this tour, his name is “Steven”, the other tour guide. But on a more serious side, Neal drove the train about 150 feet into the cavern, so folks could get a feel how claustrophobic the tour would be as we traveled 1500 feet below the earth’s surface. This kind gesture of pausing gave those feeling uneasy a chance to disembark and receive a full refund. There had been a lot of fussing from the passenger directly behind me and I could hear his wife trying to calm him down, but despite her efforts, I just kept hearing him say, “I can’t do this!”. It came to no surprise to me that with this offer of getting out now, my fellow train mate bolted for the entry.
The train, complete with u bar overhead snaked through the tunnel and at times we were only inches away from the mine’s walls. Neal warned us that any dropped cell phones would not be retrieved until our return. As conductor, Neal wound us past many sights that were under light for our appreciation and understanding of what it was like to work there, as he had done for most of his life. There was the wooden bench, presumably where workers would have lunch. The signage said, “A clean mine is a safe mine.” Neal told the story of how rodents would eat the crumbs and leftovers of the men’s food and eventually, the men complained of their worksite being overrun by mice. However, a second thought was given before a directive to sweep the mine clean of rodents was given. The men realized how whenever disaster would strike in their workplace, the mice were the first to scamper giving the men a head’s up to be on the move too.
Neal stopped to show us a pseudo bike that was used on the rails to transport men on the odd occasion, and he told of how when old mules became disabled and needed to be moved, first they would be blindfolded and gradually lifted out of the mine allowing time for their eyes to adjust to the different lighting. Neal led us on earthen floors to several caverns to show us how the coal face was blasted with rivets and the sheer depth of some of these pits. Once we finished singing “happy birthday” to a fellow tourist as she got to sit on the mine’s dunny as her “prize”, we followed the signage that said, “Surface this way” back to where we started until we literally saw the light at the end of the tunnel!
Neal was an extraordinary guide and his personal stories from having worked in this mine and the loss of so many of his colleagues made all that I had researched for my next book come real to life.
Back in town and enjoying a meal at a cafe as eclectic as the town itself, we were almost opposite the Inn at Castle Rock and my mind wandered back to our kiwis, the Browns. I felt an affinity with them, and yet we had never met! I thought back in his hometown in New Zealand all his mates would be jealous as hell, knowing he had “scored big”, but at the same time offering him a slap on the back and a hearty, “Good on ya!”
Driving back to our Phoenix air bnb we saw some of the most incredible views as the sun set over the Mule Mountains; views that pictures simply can’t do justice. For what it's worth, this is definitely worth a “re-do” and perhaps next time we’ll be choosing one of those 14 themed rooms at the Castle Rock Inn!