After The Boom In Tombstone And Jerome, Arizona: Decline In Western Resource Towns

9. As Tombstone Has Empty Houses to Burn

One of the more spectacular vistas in Arizona may be observed when standing next to the former New State Garage on Main Street in Jerome, looking northeast. To the left, in the far distance north of FlagstaV, the San Francisco Peaks jut over the horizon about Wfty miles away. In the middle distance to the right lies the red rock country of Oak Creek Canyon and Sedona. All across the view in the center stand the colorful rock formations of the north wall of the Verde Valley itself. A Yavapai County Chamber of Commerce pamphlet from the 1930s lauding the scenery on the Prescott-to-FlagstaV highway hit the mark when urging readers to take the drive into the Verde Valley: “Mere words cannot describe it although many writers have attempted it.” These extraordinary scenes have remained much the same for many thousands of years.1 It is in the near distance where things have changed. Clarkdale still lies directly northeast, four miles away and more than eighteen hundred feet below. Although its large stack is gone, the eviscerated remains of the United Verde smelter and its slag piles are still visible. Closer in, the view has changed even more in the past Wfty years. The headframes of the uvx are still visible directly below, as is the white chapter nine As Tombstone Has Empty Houses to Burn mansion that Jimmy Douglas built nearby, but the Little Daisy Hotel stands a gutted hulk to the left, and the little settlement of Daisytown, which surrounded the mine, is gone. Also missing from the modern view is the “Mexican Colony” that lay in the Bitter Creek Gulch along Rich, Juarez, and Diaz Streets below Hull Avenue, as are the houses and facilities at Hopewell and on Sunshine and Company Hills. A ninety-degree turn to the right reveals that the four-story T. F. Miller Building no longer exists and that many of the lesser buildings in the central business district have also vanished. As mentioned previously, bust produced a surplus of dwellings, business houses, and real estate in an aVected community. That was As Tombstone Has Empty Houses to Burn 177 Fig. 9.1. The Verde Valley photographed from the west end of Main Street, Jerome. The San Francisco Peaks appear at the far upper left, with the Douglas mansion visible at center-right. The headframes of the United Verde Extension lie just to the left of the Douglas mansion, with the gutted remnants of the Little Daisy Hotel at center-left. Clarkdale and the remains of the United Verde’s smelter lie in the middle distance at the center-right. more than an economic condition for those who remained behind; it had signiWcant consequences for the physical community as well. Towns full of tent houses and crowded hotels quickly became collections of largely deserted streets and buildings. After Jerome went into decline, Wve-bedroom houses could be purchased for Wfty dollars and rented for practically nothing. A rash of arsons of Tombstone’s deserted buildings in 1900 did not trouble one newspaper, which reported that “the damage was not material, as Tombstone has empty houses to burn.”2 Eighteen years before, at the height of its boom, the plat of Tombstone Township consisted of Wfteen numbered streets running east to west, and eight named streets running south to north. The town-site company’s plat was overly optimistic. The town of that era covered at most eleven streets east to west, and six south to north. The company laid out the town’s grid of streets on a mesa just to the north of Tombstone ’s hills and mines. First Street lies farthest west. Toughnut Street is the southernmost east-west street, with Allen, Fremont, SaVord, Bruce, and Fulton Streets laid out to the north. By 1882 the town had made the standard mining-camp progression from canvas and wood to more durable construction. The Arizona Weekly Citizen reported Tombstone’s residents initially reluctant to build in adobe, “but after two destructive Wres, and four years of high insurance, they have concluded that after all there is virtue in the mud bricks.” That was a lesson learned the hard way in many mining towns of the West.3 Along with more permanent construction came a rationalization and segregation of functions and activities as a town aged. Mining always occurred largely outside of Tombstone’s limits on the hills...