Bisbee Queen Mine
— a mountain hollowed out by lamplight.
Not only on a wall.
Bisbee Queen Mine, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“At the south end of Bisbee, where the Mule Mountains drop into Queen Mine Canyon, the Copper Queen ran from 1877 to 1975 — nearly a century of underground copper that built the town above it. Since 1976 a small electric mine train has carried visitors a third of a mile into the original workings, helmeted and lit, behind a retired Phelps Dodge miner guiding the tour.
The place, in three passes.
The Queen Mine sits at the south end of Bisbee at about 5,300 feet in the Mule Mountains of Cochise County, with the tour portal at 478 North Dart Road just off State Route 80. The original workings extend miles into the mountain on multiple levels, though the public tour follows only a single drift a third of a mile in. The property is owned by the City of Bisbee and operated as a historic site, with mining-era equipment, ore cars, and timbering left in place underground.
Commercial copper mining at the Copper Queen began in 1877 and continued under Phelps Dodge from 1885 until 1975, when underground operations closed alongside the neighbouring Lavender Pit. Over that span the Bisbee mining district produced more than eight billion pounds of copper, three million ounces of gold, and over a hundred million ounces of silver. The City of Bisbee opened the mine for public tours in 1976, the year after closure, partly to retain mining knowledge and partly to anchor the town's pivot to heritage tourism.
The tour leaves several times daily from the portal building on Dart Road, on the south side of State Route 80 from the historic downtown. Visitors are issued a yellow slicker, a hard hat, and a battery lamp, then ride a small electric mine train a third of a mile into the mountain. The temperature inside holds around 47 degrees Fahrenheit year-round, so a jacket helps even in summer. Tours run about an hour and a quarter and are led by retired Bisbee miners who worked the underground works.
