BISBEE : A long way from its heyday as a mining town, Bisbee brims with contentment now, and sports a passel of characters

By early evening of a winter weekend, the streets of Bisbee are deserted. Fallen leaves scatter as a chill wind whips off the slopes of the forlorn Mule Mountains and shutters bang against deserted houses sagging on twisted foundations. Except for the wind, there is only the howl of a coyote in the growing darkness.

By night, the town that roared for nearly a century appears to be nothing more than a spooky old spot on a road leading to nowhere.

In its heyday Bisbee’s mines turned out $6.1 billion in gold, silver, copper and zinc, but all this ended in the 1970s. The mines are as still as this particular night.

Entering Bisbee, I turned up OK Street to the Bisbee Inn where I’d booked a room for the night. The coyote howled again, its cry echoing through Bisbee’s maze of empty streets.

If I feared I’d be spending the night in some drafty old barn, I was wrong. The inn with its yellow glow and warm fire hummed with conversation. While it’s not the St. Regis, the Bisbee Inn is clean and comfortable, with guest rooms done up in a setting that appears to be a flashback to Bisbee’s more opulent era. Besides, with rates pegged at $22 single and $34 double, including a generous breakfast, I could fault it only for its lack of private baths. At the Bisbee Inn, guests share.

While Bisbee isn’t a ghost town (this was evident the following morning), neither is it a boom town. Rather, it’s a refuge for artists, craftsmen and an assortment of drifters who grew weary of the pressures of the cities and put in their bid for the harmony of Bisbee.

John Timbers and his schoolteacher wife Joy abandoned Tucson 10 years ago to strike new life into the then-blighted Bisbee Inn. In the process, they discovered an elusive contentment as well as financial success.

Bisbee lures its share of characters. Harry the Embalmer for one. Harry J. Mitchell was a sergeant in the Army at nearby Ft. Huachucha in 1956 and a choir director at the local Baptist Church when he got the calling. A voice from the wilderness whispered, “Wise up, Harry--don’t leave.” And so after his discharge from the Army he stayed on to become an apprentice embalmer.

Still, Bisbee isn’t the sort of place with many residents who are dying to leave, and so Harry Mitchell had to moonlight to make ends meet. In Bisbee and neighboring towns he preached sermons, officiated at weddings, delivered eulogies at funerals and launched himself into the catering business.

After offering the eulogy at a funeral the other morning, Harry the Embalmer stopped by his favorite saloon on Brewery Gulch, brightening up his day with a couple of beers and the cheer of a motley bunch joining him at the bar.

Raising his glass, Harry told them: “Just sent another fine fellow off to glory.”

Solemnly, his colleagues raised their glasses. “Amen,” they chorused.

Harry the Embalmer is the sort one expects to bump into on a Mississippi river boat, the guy with the string tie, the arm garters and a pair of hot dice.

Damon Runyon would have cherished Harry J. Mitchell whose business card reads: “Weddings, Funerals, Sermons, Used Cars.”

Leaving Harry to his cronies--”Bartender, another beer!” cried Harry--I strolled up the street to another B&B;, which operates under the grandiose handle of the Inn at Castle Rock. While a trifle shopworn, the Castle Rock is appealing in an informal sense of the word. The Rock is operated by Jim Babcock, a geologist from Aspen, and Dorothy Pearl, a librarian from Sausalito.

A wood-burning stove warms things up in the parlor with its piano and loads of books. Kerosene lamps flicker next door in the dining room, and downstairs in the tearoom guests gather around an old mine shaft brimming over with water and goldfish.

The ex-boarding house for miners features a dozen guest rooms (10 with private baths), including a glitzy Victorian named The Gold Strike with a four-poster bed.

A room with breakfast starts at $20 single and $30 double, including an eyeful of the action along lively Tombstone Canyon that twists by the door.

A few doors away, the shingle outside the venerable Copper Queen Hotel tells of “44 gracious rooms” with baths ($25 to $50) that’ve attracted the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, Black Jack Pershing and actors John Wayne and Lee Marvin. Built by the Copper Queen Mining Co., the four-story Queen does meals in a turn-of-the-century dining room and serves tea and spirits outside on the veranda. (There’s even a swimming pool out back.)

Newest on the hotel scene is former Phoenix antique dealer Nell Peel, who remodeled the Bisbee Grand Hotel to serve as a storehouse for her treasures. An ex-brothel, the Bisbee Grand offers nine rooms and three suites that are filled with the antiques Peel gathered during her travels.

In its bloom, Bisbee roared round the clock with a lineup of 68 saloons. The local historian tells how more than 400 hookers strolled its streets, including Crazy Horse Lil, Red Jean and Kate Elder (Doc Holliday’s mistress), who offered their charms to miners, gamblers and a string of millionaires.

As one of the world’s richest mining towns, Bisbee took off in 1880 and didn’t wind down until the closing of the pits and mines in 1974. In the interim, Bisbee became famous for the biggest hole ever dug by man, the celebrated Lavender Pit that encompasses 213 acres at its rim. Money was as plentiful as the sunshine that bathes Bisbee, which lies 98 miles southeast of Tucson and barely six miles from the Mexican border.

With its rich ore, Bisbee seemed invincible. Unfortunately, it was a one-economy town and when the leading employer, Phelps Dodge Corp., closed the open-pit mines, Bisbee became the boom town that went bust. Thousands hit the road. Bisbee was left with empty houses, empty stores and empty dreams.

The wind that whistles this night off the Mule Mountains was the voice of the ghost that cried out in despair. Bisbee’s obituary has been written a dozen times over. Waves of newcomers arrive regularly-- hippies, artists, craftsmen. A few leave, some remain.

Several years ago, ex-mayor Charlie Eads came up with the idea of opening the mines to tourists. Now visitors don hard hats and slickers for train rides deep into the earth that produced the enormous wealth. Bisbee calls it the “most authentic mine tour in the U.S.” and who’s to argue? Ex-miners deliver the spiel, telling how emigrants from Europe labored underneath the Mule Mountains to help bring forth the wealth that enriched the nation. Visitors carry battery-pack lights used by the miners and wear sweaters against the 47-degree chill.

Others join tours of the huge open-pit Lavender mine and the streets of Bisbee itself.

Neto Chavez, 58, mined in Bisbee for 25 years. Now he jockeys a bus to historic residences on Quality Hill and past the old Lyric Theater (“Home of Houdini”) and on to Brewery Gulch, which was described during Bisbee’s boom days as “the place where the sun shines 330 days a year and there’s moonshine every night.” Only six bars still do business in Bisbee, including the St. Elmo, which is a scene straight out of the old “Gunsmoke” TV series--complete with a lady barkeep. From the lineup of scruffy customers inside, it would seem reasonable to presume that Bisbee provides somewhat more sedate sanctuaries in which to sip a sarsaparilla. While proprietress Georgia Shields stood by, two chaps were busy arm wrestling while others placed orders for their first bourbon of the day. It was barely 7 o’clock in the morning.

“Is it always crowded so early?” I asked.

The barkeep eyed me suspiciously. “What d’ya mean, crowded? Hardly anyone’s showed up yet!”

When Bisbee was humming ‘round the clock, the population passed the 35,000 figure. Miners threaded their way through 2,500 miles of tunnels that honeycomb the earth. Shifts worked ‘round the clock and whenever the miners weren’t underground they were raising Cain in the bars and bordellos lining Brewery Gulch.

With the closing of the mines and the mass exodus, pensioners bought fixer-uppers and entrepreneurs gambled by creating a lineup of antique and craft shops.

Valerie Miller, a GI’s bride from Britain, prepares quiche, sandwiches and home-baked pastries in a snug restaurant on OK Street that she calls The Vienna.

Up the block at Tortilla Flat the waitress delivers orders to old-fashioned, glass-topped pinball machines that make do as tables. Choices range from a shrimp, avocado and cheese combination called The Cannery Row to a bean/cheese selection listed as Travels With Charley.

While Bisbee’s residents aren’t anxious for their town to die, neither are they anxious for it to be overrun with tourists. They prefer to keep the status quo. Let nearby Tombstone turn on the carnival atmosphere, they say. Bisbee is special.

On the other hand, some find it simply too peaceful, and, bored, they move on. At 5,000 feet, the air is pure and the skies are seldom cloudy. Bisbee reports almost no crime and there isn’t a single traffic light (the fuzz keep active writing traffic citations for outlanders hurrying through town).

Judy Perry, who produces plays at the Theater in the Gulch, describes Bisbee as a throwback to another century, a place where neighbors help neighbors in an old-fashioned display of caring and compassion.

Tall, blond Perry drifted out to Bisbee from Columbus, Ohio, singing with a group called the Green Tomatoz and the Borderline Jazz Band that entertains in Bisbee’s bars and restaurants. She also paints and helped organize the Theater in the Gulch, which does live drama in a beat-up old store next door to the St. Elmo.

Perry says she never locks her house or car. “I’m not afraid to walk the streets alone at night, ever.” She smiles happily. “Living in Bisbee is like living in heaven.”

With the growing darkness, the coyote cried again.

Accommodations:

Bisbee Inn, 45 OK St., Bisbee 85603. Telephone (602) 432-5131.

The Inn at Castle Rock, 112 Tombstone Canyon, Bisbee 85603. Telephone (602) 432-7195.

Copper Queen Hotel, 11 Howell Ave., Bisbee 85603. Telephone (602) 432-2216.