Bisbee 1917 — Uncover the Deportation Conspiracy

Your journey begins at the Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum. This building, founded in 1897 as the offices of the Copper Queen Consolidated Mining Company, was converted into a museum in 1970. It is directly linked to Phelps Dodge, the company that orchestrated the 1917 deportation. The museum exhibits artifacts from the IWW miners' strike of June-July 1917, offering you a glimpse into the labor tensions that preceded the event. Here, you will find the first pieces of the puzzle to understand the complexity of this Arizona heritage tragedy.

As you head towards Brewery Gulch, you enter the historic heart of Bisbee, a district that was the scene of mining operations and IWW strike gatherings in June 1917. The narrow cobblestone streets, lined with Victorian buildings dating from 1890-1910, were the site of mass arrests at 6:30 AM on July 12, 1917, carried out by 2,200 deputies. The Cochise County Bank Building, built in 1903 in the center of Brewery Gulch, witnessed these events, its red brick Neo-classical Revival architecture having seen the arrested miners pass by.

The Copper Queen Hotel, built in 1902 by Phelps Dodge to house its executives and VIP visitors, is a key edifice in this story. It was here that Sheriff Harry C. Wheeler, organizer of the 2,200-man posse, planned part of the operation on July 12, 1917. The hotel was a silent witness to the labor tensions during the IWW strike. Not far, the Old Cochise County Courthouse, built in 1883, served as Sheriff Wheeler's headquarters during the planning of the deportation on July 11-12, 1917. It was there that he coordinated with Phelps Dodge the list of 1,300 men to be arrested, making this Neo-classical brick building a central location of the conspiracy.

Your path then leads to Warren Ballpark, built in 1909-1910, the oldest continuously used professional baseball stadium in Arizona. This site is of paramount importance to Bisbee's history: it was here that approximately 1,300 miners were detained under armed guard for five hours on July 12, 1917, before their forced deportation. The stadium, with a capacity of about 2,000 spectators, was transformed into an improvised internment camp, a 1917 Labor History Landmark. The 'Bisbee 1917 Mural' pays tribute to this event, recalling the struggle for workers' rights.

At the end of this exploration of Arizona's historic monuments, you will have walked through the places that marked the Bisbee Deportation, an event listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and which earned Bisbee the title of Arizona Most Historic Town in 2006. From the mining company offices to the arrest and internment sites, each location, including the peaceful Evergreen Cemetery, will have revealed a facet of this dark period. You take with you not only a better understanding of American labor history but also a deep immersion into the events that shaped the Bisbee Historic District, a city with a rich and complex heritage.