Ruby ghost town
— a mining town the desert quietly closed.
Not only on a wall.
Ruby ghost town, 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.
“A preserved ghost town in the Pajarito Mountains of southern Arizona, about four miles north of the border. Ruby was a lead, zinc and silver camp that worked through the 1920s and 1930s and shut down for good in 1941, when the last ore train left and the company houses were locked. Most of the buildings are still standing — the schoolhouse, the jail, the mine office, the company store — held in place by dry desert air and private stewardship. Two small lakes sit at the floor of the canyon, and the road in is unpaved gravel that turns to clay after rain. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Ruby sits in the Pajarito Mountains of Santa Cruz County, about four miles north of the U.S.–Mexico border and roughly 50 miles southwest of Tucson. The settlement grew up around the Montana Mine, which produced lead, zinc and silver from the 1870s onward and was Arizona's leading lead and zinc producer through the 1930s. The town reached a peak population of about 1,200 residents in the mid-1930s, with a post office, a school, and a small commercial main street. Mining ended in 1941, the post office closed in 1942, and the residents left. The site is now privately owned and is one of the best-preserved ghost towns in the American West.
About two dozen original buildings still stand on site, including the 1936 schoolhouse, the mercantile, the mine superintendent's house, and the small stone jail. Most are simple wood-frame structures with adobe footings, weathered to grey under more than 80 years of high-desert sun. The headframe over the Montana Mine shaft, the mill foundations and several ore-car rails remain in place along the canyon floor. The dry climate, the remoteness, and decades of resident caretakers have kept the buildings from collapsing in the way many Arizona mining camps did. The town is held in private trust and is operated as a paid-access historic site.
Ruby is reached by Ruby Road (Forest Road 39), a gravel route that runs roughly 12 miles west from Interstate 19 at Amado, through Coronado National Forest. The road is generally passable by high-clearance two-wheel-drive vehicles in dry weather; rain can make the final mile slick clay. The site is privately owned, open by paid day-use permit and camping reservation, and is staffed by caretakers who collect the fee at the gate. Two small lakes — once mine settling ponds — hold bass and bluegill and are open to fishing with an Arizona licence. Carry water; there is no fuel or food on the road in.
