More Recent History; Jerome, Arizona

On Wednesday we had some rain so we decided not to try to see any archaeological sites. Instead we drove up to the little town of Jerome, perched on the side of Cleopatra Hill just west of us. Fortunately for us the rain stopped just as we arrived, the last of it making a rainbow.

Jerome was a mining town and the hillside it sits on is so steep the road to it fits tightly against a wall on the side of the hill, while the sidewalk hangs out in the air. There are no trucks over 50 feet allowed on the section of State Route 89A that goes through town. In the 1930’s erosion and the vibrations from the explosions in the mines caused many of the buildings to slip, including the jail which slid 200 feet across 89A.

Our first stop was the Audrey Headframe Park. A headframe is a structure that sits over a mining shaft. This one is made of wood and held three sets of pulleys over which cables ran to lift cargo cages. There were three sets of pulleys because the shaft itself was in three segments. The shaft was 1900 feet deep and the three segments were joined at horizontal hubs at several levels. The shaft and headframe were built in 1918 after James S. Douglas finally found an incredibly rich copper deposit.

The park lets you walk over the westernmost segment on a glass floor.

The floor flexed when Bud stood on it, so he moved to the edge to read the information.

The glass was cloudy so I took this picture through a grate at the edge of it. That’s what it looks like to peer down 1900 feet.

Even though it’s cloudy it is still pretty spooky to stand on the glass and look down.

Just so you know what you’re dealing with, this little drawing is posted inside the shed over the shaft. The line in the middle represents the depth of the shaft.

This shaft was used for ore, but similar shafts up to 1000 feet deep were used to transport people in contraptions like this.

The Audrey Headframe was the largest built by the United Verde Extension (UVX) Company. Ore hauled through this shaft yielded 320,000 tons of copper, 190 tons of silver and 5.3 tons of gold. The company made better than a 70% profit until the 1930’s when the price of copper dropped.

As went the mine, so went the town. At its peak there were 15000 people who lived here.

After the mine shut down the population dropped to less than 100.

Then in the 1960’s the hippies moved in, setting up art studios. People began to promote tourism and the Jerome Historical Society bought up much of the old downtown to keep it intact.

The Historical Society operates a Miners’ Museum in town and the hippie influence is there. Where else would you see an unvarnished exhibit on the prostitution that was prominent in the heyday and an authentic “sanitary car” from the mines? I highly recommend it, well worth the $2 admission. And it supports the 465 people that live in Jerome today.