Description

Coal bins at the United Verde Copper Company, Clarkdale, Arizona. The Company was organized in 1882. The United Verde Mine was situated on the eastern slope of the Black Hills, in Yavapai County, Arizona. This valley had been inhabited by native peoples for prehistoric centuries; numerous remains of their dwellings were found in the cliffs and gorges and on the mountain tops. The first white men settled in the area around 1865. The fertile Verde River proved beneficial for farming. However, others were more interested in prospecting the surrounding hills, and an outcropping of copper-bearing ore was discovered in 1876. Then governor of the Arizona territory, Hon. F. A. Tritle, took notice and enlisted the financial aid of two New York principals, James A. Macdonald and Eugene Jerome (the town of Jerome being named for the him). Macdonald was the first president and Jerome the secretary of the newly founded corporation. This was the start of a mining legacy; the rich copper ore deposits turned Jerome into a boom town; by 1929 the population had grown to an estimated 15,000. Succeeding owners including Senator William A. Clark and James S. Douglas. Clark's United Verde Copper Company and James "Rawhide Jimmy" Douglas' Verde Extension mines produced millions of dollars' worth of copper, gold and silver. In 1935, Phelps Dodge Corporation purchased the United Verde property and continued operating it until 1953 when the last of the mines shut down.