History of Jerome, Arizona
The history of Jerome, Arizona is a much longer one than that of the town itself. Before Jerome was Jerome it was the site of a small dig mined by the local Yavapai tribe. The Spanish were the first Europeans to explore the Verde River area in the 16th century. Antonio de Espejo and a troop of Conquistators came through the area looking for El Cibola (the mythic Seven Cities of Gold). Local natives showed them a spot on what later became known as Cleopatra Hill where they mined copper for their jewelry. Legend has it that the Conquistators found a large vein of gold, mined it, and hid it somewhere in nearby Sycamore Canyon. An old coot named Jerry the Miner spent nearly thirty years in the canyon looking for the treasure. He claimed to have found a helmet and a breastplate left by one of the Conquistators. Some people said that he actually found the gold, but these claims have never been verified.
It wasn't until 1876 that American pioneers became interested in the area. An ex-Calvary scout named Al Sieber was exploring the Verde Valley looking for gold. When he saw the old mines on the side of Cleopatra Hill, he thought they had potential and so he staked a claim. It wasn't long before other fortune seekers followed his lead. One of those fortune seekers was Nora "Butter" Brown, an enterprising Madam who opened Jerome's first bordello. Her story can be found at "Opening Night" Others, such as Angus McKinnon and M. A. Ruffner filed claims not long after. In 1883, investors bought the McKinnon claim for $15,500, and in 1888, Montana Senator William A. Clark leased the mining rights and in 1889 bought control of the claim and formed the United Verde Copper Company. The United Verde Mine eventually produced over $1 billion in copper, gold, silver. Jerome was on its way.
It was the eye of the hurricane of America's wild west. It attracted people looking not only for riches but also for a newer freer life. This drive for freedom and adventure caused the lives of the most unlikely people to cross in Jerome. A fascinating example can be found at Meeting In Mescal1 and Meeting In Mescal2.
The town of Jerome was incorporated on March 8, 1898 when Arizona was still a territory. It is said that Jerome was named for Eugene Murray Jerome, a New York investor in the early mining operations of the United Verde and cousin of Jennie Churchill. Jerome was incorporated (over the objections of certain property owners) because it suffered three catastrophic fires within an eighteen-month period. From the beginning Jerome was a wild town with minimal law enforcement, building codes, or real government. It was so wild that it earned the title "The Wickedest Town in America". Some wags said that Jerome's sinful ways finally got the attention of higher ups. They attributed these fires to divine retribution. Regardless of the source of these fires, by incorporating, the citizens of Jerome were able to adopt a strict building code and establish a fire department. One of the department's first challenges was a fire in a major mineshaft. The shaft collapsed, killing close to a dozen men. Fortunately, many men were saved due to the efforts of the local firemen and an unlikely ally. Read about it in The President's Friend.
Jerome's reputation for gambling, alcohol, drug abuse, gunfights, and other assorted mayhem only grew after it incorporated. The population grew by leaps and bounds through the next few years, and, when World War One came the price of copper soared and, along with it, the number of miners needed to tear the ore out of the mountain. They came from Mexico, China, and all over Europe - Irish, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Slovakian, German - to work the mines in the unlikely town of Jerome, Arizona which clung stubbornly to the side of a mountain 5000 feet in the air. During the war, the International Workers of the World tried to stage a strike to obtain better pay and working conditions for the miners. The strike was brutally crushed by the mine owners with the help of the National Guard and the strikers were actually deported out of Jerome in railroad cattle cars and dropped off at the California border. For one local boy the event was a traumatic learning experience. His name was Billy Daily.
It was during the boom years of the twenties that Jerome reached its roaring peak. The population of the town swelled to 15,000 people. The mines were working twenty-four hours a day. Hotels were dedicated solely to servicing miners. Hotel rooms were rented in eight-hour shifts to accommodate the 24-hour working schedule. And because the miners were working all day and all night, the businesses of Jerome were also open around the clock. Prostitution and gambling flourished. Bootleggers supplied the town with all the illegal alcohol it could consume. Opium dens were as numerous as laundries and run by the same Chinese owners. There were three movie theaters, bars, restaurants, schools, tennis courts, swimming pools, bowling alleys, pool halls, drug stores, department stores, churches, brothels, opera house - all the virtues and vices of a classic wild west boomtown. It was a time when women were beginning to realize their own strength and independence. In Jerome, there was one that led the way. Her name was Vivica. Read her story in Loaded Gun.
But, as with almost all the other boomtowns, the good times finally came to an end for the town of Jerome. High-grade ore became scarcer and harder to dig out of the mountain. The price of copper fell. And in 1929 the Great Depression began. As quickly as it built itself into a money-producing machine, Jerome fell into the depression along with the rest of the country. The mines closed in 1930. There are few records of the town during this period. People were hanging on with their hopes and prayers. There was no other real employment for a hundred miles in any direction. Finally, in 1935 Phelp Dodge bought up a majority of the mining rights in and around Jerome. They decided to blast the ore out of the mountain, creating a huge open pit just to the north of town. For the next few years, Jerome suffered the consequences of this type of mining. The company would explode up to 250,000 pounds of dynamite at a time, blasting the mountain to smithereens and carting the ore to the smelter in Clarkdale by way of a full scale underground railroad. This constant blasting shook Jerome down to its roots. One whole commercial block of downtown Jerome actually slid down the hill. A movie theater, a pharmacy, a pool hall, a JC Penny's, and other businesses crumbled, slid downhill, and had to be dismantled. Jerome's famous "Sliding Jail" can still be seen hundreds of feet downhill from its original location. It was during this period that the father of the Atom Bomb made a brief and life-changing stop in Jerome. His story can be found at The Drift of Stars.
When the Second World War came, copper prices surged once again and the town experienced a mini rebirth. However, once again, good high-grade ore became harder and harder to get out of the mountain, and, after the war, the prices dropped once again. During this period some of the strangest events in Jerome's history occurred. To this day no one is sure if the stories told by Bernie Peoples are true, but you can decide for yourself after reading, The Peoples' File.
Finally, in 1952, Phelps Dodge closed its operations in Jerome. This time the closing was final. There was no other work for the unemployed miners and the company made no provisions for them. They had no union to look after them after the owners broke the back of the unions in 1917. Consequently, Jerome suddenly became a ghost town. Families sold their houses for bus fare out of town. Those who couldn't sell just left their homes, many with the furniture still in them. The population dwindled down to perhaps fifty hard-core individuals and families. They were suddenly faced with governing a town with an infrastructure designed for a population of 15,000 people. Needless to say, many buildings, streets, facilities, and utilities began to deteriorate. All through the fifties the few that had stayed behind tried valiantly to save the town they loved. They established the Jerome Historical Society The Society bought up as much property has they could, concentrating in the commercial district. In spite of their efforts many structures were lost to slippage, vandalism, and speculators. Their attempts to promote the ghost town aspect of Jerome met with some early success, however. There were always those fascinated by the old wild west and would go out of their way to experience what was left of that romantic period. Two visitors found more than nostalgia when ran into each other on a beautiful spring day in April, 1957.
The town remained quiet, empty, and out of the way through the early sixties. It was the perfect place for someone who didn't want to be found to hide - someone who needed some Operating Room. It wasn't until 1967 when a new group of pioneers found the deserted town. A group of young people, disenchanted with what they saw as the hyped-up over-commercialized and life destroying American dream and looking for a place to live a simpler life, closer to the land, stumbled onto Jerome. They moved in and started rebuilding and restoring the town. Initially, there was some resistance from the residents that had stuck it out and gone through the hard times, naturally enough, but when it finally became obvious that the odd looking young people loved the town and were determined to make a go of it, the diverse elements became a community. To read what it was like in the beginning, check out The White Ship.
Through the seventies, slowly but surely, the outside world began to intrude upon the town. Speculators moved in attempting to create tourist friendly businesses. House prices rose steadily. Large structures such as the old grade school were purchased and remodeled into restaurants and bars. It became a place where, once again, a person might make a dream come true - a dream of wealth, a dream of enlightenment, a dream of romance. For two people it went even deeper when they had their final Meeting in Mescal.
By the eighties, the town was in full swing rebirth. It was roaring once again. No longer out of the way, it was being drug kicking and screaming back into the mainstream. One frightened girl thought that it was still a good place to hide. She was wrong. Someone who really was The Missing Person would find her.
Jerome has always held an indefinable ghostly, mystical energy. You can ask almost anyone who has spent any time here. For one local in the nineties that energy took him to places beyond anything he was prepared for. I Sleep To Wake is a chronicle of his otherworldly adventures.
Since those days, Jerome has slowly built itself into a town that is haunted, over the shoulder, by its past while it moves, lurching in circles, into the twenty-first century.
What does the future hold? Perhaps The Goodbye Party is an indication . . . is an indication . . .
Courtesy of Jerome Times
History of Yavapai County
This county is bounded on the north and west by Mohave County, on the east by New Mexico, and the south by Maricopa County. Nearly the entire county has an elevation of from 5,000 to 6,000 feet above the level of the sea, and several mountains rise to the height of 12,000 to 14,000 feet. It contains large forests of excellent timber, and many valleys superior for agriculture. Grass is abundant everywhere, and the advantages for stock raising cannot be excelled. Considerable attention has been paid to farming, and with the exception of two dry seasons, the yield has been equal to that of other favored grain growing States. The farmers of this county have depended entirely upon the rainfall to grow their crops. Experience seems to prove that irrigation will have to be resorted to in order to insure a certain yield. The most prominent streams of water in this county are the Little Colorado, Verde, Salt, Sipicue and White rivers. They all abound in excellent fish; and turkey, bear and deer, are plentiful in all the mountains of Arizona.
MINES - Owing to the hostility of the Apache Indians, prospecting and mining has been much retarded over a large portion of the county, but sufficient explorations have been made to demonstrate the fact that it contains extensively rich mines of gold and silver-scarcely a mountain has been examined that does not show rich deposits of these metals. Placer gold is found over a large extent of country, and during wet seasons are worked with great profit. If water can be carried to these mines by means of artificial ditches (and it is believed it can be from the Verde river), lucrative employment would be given to hundreds of miners. The discovery of gold and silver quartz lodes are so numerous that it is out of the question to give room in this pamphlet to mention but one or two of the leading ones: The Vulture mine at Wickenburg is principally of gold ore; the lode is large and well defined, and is being worked now to a depth of about 300 feet; 200 men are constantly employed, and a forty stamp mill is regularly operated with paying results. The ore is drawn on wagons, for reduction, fifteen miles, at a heavy cost. If machinery was erected at the mine, vast quantities of ore that will not pay for transportation, could be worked, and the profits on all would be proportionately greater, and this mine would take front rank as a gold producing mine. The Bradshaw mines have been but recently discovered, and have already a wide and valuable reputation. The Tiger lode gives promise of taking an important position beside the great silver bearing mines of Mexico and the United States, and there are many other lodes in this district that prospect well. There has yet been no machinery erected for the reduction of ores, but many tons have been shipped from the Tiger to San Francisco that has yielded over $1,000 00 per ton. With safety from Indians and capital to develop the mines of this county, many millions of gold and silver would be annually extracted and put in circulation.
TRADE AND FREIGHTS - Goods for this portion of Arizona are partly purchased in New York, and shipped by R. R., to the terminus of the Kansas Pacific R. R., thence by freight teams via Albuquerque to Prescott. The cost of freighting by this route is about $360 per ton. A portion of the supplies is purchased in San Francisco and shipped by steamer to San Pedro, thence via Los Angeles, or via the Colorado River and Eherenburg, and thence by freight teams to Prescott and other points. The freights by either of these routes cost about $300 per ton.
Towns - Prescott is located 155 miles east of the Colorado River by the wagon road, and 403 miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is the county seat of the county, and the headquarters for the Military Department of Arizona; contains a population of about 1200; is pleasantly situated in a valley, surrounded by a forest of pines. The buildings are generally constructed of wood, and have the appearance of taste and comfort. Its green hills, tall pines and. productive gardens, give it an appearance of beauty and comfort rarely excelled. The people are energetic and enterprising, and use every exertion possible to overcome the obstacles of Indian hostilities, high transportation, and to develop the resources of the county. They are justly proud of their mountain home, and generally desire to remain there for life. It contains several large mercantile houses, two of which are fireproof, and would do credit to any old settled town. There are many families here, and a school has been kept open, mainly by private subscription, during the past three years. Efforts are now being made that will undoubtedly secure a free public school. The Good Templars have a flourishing society, and a Methodist Church is in process of construction. Divine service is held on Sundays, and is generally well attended.
WICKENBURG - This town is located on Hassayampa creek, about 90 miles south of Prescott; contains a population of about 500, and was named after Henry Wickenburg, the discoverer of the Vulture mine. It is centrally located to extensive mining regions, though the larger portions are yet undeveloped. It contains a number of mercantile houses, and is destined to grow with the development of the county.
CLIMATE AND HEALTH OF THE COUNTY - The climate of this county taken altogether, can hardly be excelled. Over the larger portion, the thermometer rarely shows a higher degree of heat in the summer than 90 deg., while the winter months are bracing and cool, but never severe. The mercury seldom falls below zero.
With the exception of two or three locations (where swamps cause chills and fevers), malarious diseases are almost unknown, and bronchial and lung complaints are always benefited in this climate.