Friday, 20 December 2002
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To learn more * For more information on Christmas and Gila County history, visit the Gila County Historical Museum, 1330 N. Broadway in Globe. The phone number is (928) 425-7385. |
A.E. Araiza / Staff
Caretaker: Jay Spehar oversees the Christmas property for Phelps Dodge Miami
Inc. Mostly, he watches over its cemetery.
By David Wichner
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
CHRISTMAS - You may celebrate Christmas in Arizona, but Christmas, Ariz., is just a faded memory.
You can still find the town of Christmas, near Winkelman about 75 miles north of Tucson off Arizona 77, on maps of the area.But don't drive off to find it - the one-time copper boomtown has been a ghost town cut off to public access since the Christmas Mine was closed about 20 years ago.
That doesn't prevent curious tourists from searching for the town after spotting it on a map.
According to the Web site www.placesnamed.com, there are also towns named Christmas in Florida, Michigan and Mississippi. Utah has a Christmas City.
"Once in a while, we get people who come in and ask, 'We noticed Christmas on the map - is it still there?' " said Mary Anne Moreno, executive director of the Globe-Miami Chamber of Commerce.
Like many small mining camps that have disappeared over the years, Christmas succumbed to plunging copper prices in the early 1980s.
"Lots of things aren't here anymore," Moreno lamented.
The Christmas Mine site is owned by the Phelps Dodge Copper Co. and has been gated off since a previous owner, Inspiration Consolidated Copper Co., closed the mine around 1983.
Sitting on a rich copper deposit at the southern end of the Dripping Springs Mountains, Christmas started as a mining camp at the turn of the century. Mining claims were first staked around Christmas in 1880, but the original stakers found they couldn't work the claims because the area was part of the San Carlos Indian Reservation.
In 1902, Congress passed a law removing the area from the reservation, partly through the efforts of a mining-camp postmaster named George B. Chittenden.
Chittenden had arranged for a relay of horsemen to bring word of the enactment from the nearest telegraph office in Casa Grande.
According to historical accounts, Chittenden received word on Christmas Eve, staked his claims on Christmas Day - also his birthday - and named the camp for the occasion.
Between 1910 and 1920, Christmas' population boomed to more than 1,000, supporting a school, a church, a barbershop and a hat shop. A railroad spur to Christmas was completed in 1910 along what is now Arizona 77.
But during the mid-1920s and 1930s, low copper prices and the Depression forced the mine to close periodically, and the population dwindled. The post office closed in 1935.
Mining started up again in earnest sometime in the 1940s, and in 1955, Inspiration bought the mine from Rivera Mine Co.
Depressed copper prices prompted Inspiration to close the Christmas Mine in 1983, idling about 250 remaining workers, most of whom lived elsewhere. Inspiration sold the mine to Cyprus Amax Minerals Co. in 1988, and Phelps Dodge acquired the site as part of its purchase of Cyprus in 1999.
Globe resident Jack Eastlick, 81, lived in Christmas with his wife, Mildred, from 1955 to 1966, with about 20 other families.
Eastlick initially worked at Christmas as a geologist for Anaconda Copper Co., which had an interest in Inspiration. He worked full time at Christmas until he was transferred in 1966 but continued to work at the Christmas Mine until his retirement in 1983.
"We loved it out there in Christmas when we lived there," said Eastlick, who recalled a close-knit relationship with mining families in nearby Winkelman.
Eastlick said he doesn't recall any special Yule celebrations because of the town's name, but outsiders often sought a connection.
"A lot of people came in with the idea of mailing their Christmas cards there, but we had to tell them there was no post office," he said.
While Christmas remains a curiosity because of its name, its rise and fall is typical of the boom-and-bust nature of an industry that once dominated much of the state.
It's a cycle that goes on to this day, including the closure of the San Manuel mine complex by BHP Copper in 1999.
"It went on all over the West," said Eastlick. "Ever since mining started, there's been a boom and a bust."
Today, Christmas remains a ghost of Arizona's copper past.
All that remains of the town are the hulks of about 10 houses built by Inspiration in the 1960s, huddled in the bottom of a hardscrabble canyon, and the town's small cemetery.
"The old Christmas town site is long since gone - I don't know where it is anymore," said Jay Spehar, who oversees the property for Phelps Dodge Miami Inc.
Numerous old fenced mine-shaft entrances look down on the foundations of production facilities removed in recent years, including a tall "head frame" formerly visible from the nearby highway.
One of the last vestiges of Christmas' early days is a cemetery holding about 40 visible graves, though old news accounts suggest that 105 people were buried there.
Perched on a lower canyon ridge, the cemetery holds many ramshackle graves topped with stone cairns, amid thick manzanita underbrush, barrel cacti and other native flora.
Many graves are marked by broken wooden crosses, their epitaphs long ago gnawed away by time. Other crosses, made of strap metal, angle iron and even porcelain doorknobs, recall the town's utilitarian mining culture.
"Our goal is to maintain the integrity of the cemetery," Spehar said.
While the mine and town site are barred from public access at the highway, Spehar occasionally escorts people to the Christmas cemetery to visit the graves of ancestors.
"Lots of time, they live in California or Colorado and they discover parts of their roots are here," Spehar said.
Someday, the Christmas Mine may live again, if copper prices rebound over a long enough time span to make the mine's low-grade ore profitable to extract once more, Spehar and Eastlick said.
"There's a tremendous geological resource here, and I fully expect at some point in time, the economy of copper will dictate coming back in here," Spehar said.
* Contact reporter David Wichner at 573-4181 or at wichner@azstarnet.com.
