BISBEE .... Cool Town

 It was a long night.  In spite of the allergy shot, Mr. Cooper is still afflicted with itchiness.  Poor baby ... he kept me up all night long.  That means I'm a little bleary eyed this morning, so excuse me if I oh hey, did you see that train? .... wander.

I spent the first few minutes admiring the flying capabilities of these tiny little guys.  Man they are FAST! Sometimes there are as many as ten fighting for foot space at the dinner table.  It's pretty fun to watch.  If they get chased away, they hang out in the nearby tree chirping like crazy, then try again when the bully is gone.  

As I watched, I heard some weird noises.  I'm always hyper alert for critters, trains, people or anything else that goes bump in the night.  This was one of those weird noises.  Apparently I was right at the very edge of the rain cloud.  It rained on half the sideway, but not the other half as I waited for the Chance family to pick me up.

And away we went, to arrive in the cool town of Bisbee about 90 minutes later.  Obviously the old west has always fascinated me.  I think I lived there in another life.  Here's my question.  Who was brave enough to take their donkey with little water and food, and walk across the desert to the mountains.  Did you just walk around looking at the ground for some sign that said GOLD HERE?

How did they know where to dig?  They were gone for weeks.  What did they eat?  How did they survive? Where did they get water?  This place Bisbee has grown up in a really steep canyon, as are many old mining towns.  

I guess they hit the Mother Lode here, because Bisbee's Mule Mountains became one of the richest mineral sites in the world.  They extracted millions in gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc.  This was a BOOM town back in the day.

In 1877, members of an Army Search Party from Fort Bowie went looking for renegade Apaches.   Jack Dunn, civilian tracker, found what he thought was gold and silver and staked the first claim.  The rush was on and Mule Gulch was formed, later becoming Bisbee.

We weren't looking for gold ... we were looking for good food!!  Parking is of course a problem on these tiny narrow streets.  Dan had already checked out the menus and picked The Table for our afternoon feast. It was a nice Art Deco building which happens to be for sale, or so I was told by the M'aitre D.

The inside is rather disjointed, but interesting to check out.  They walked us right to a table.

Here's the menu.  I think there was other stuff on the back, but we came for the BURGERS.  Yessirree ... just take a quick look at the tiny numbers at the end of the description.  That's the price.  How gauche of me to complain about Habit Burgers $14.00 offering.  

I of course picked the West Texas Millionaire.  I mean if you're gonna splurge, you might as well splurge BIG!!

It's okay ... it came with sweet potatoes fries.  So here we are sitting around looking at this weird crazy building.  You really can't tell what it used to be.  Art Deco ran from about 1919 to 1939, but the inside doesn't seem to match the outside.  I'll ask that question later.

So here it is folks ... I paid $21 to have my hamburger bun branded with a W M for Western Millionaire with a steer head that I'm sure is supposed to be the T for TEXAS.  I have to admit, it was cooked absolutely perfectly and was one of the best burgers I've had ... but you have to like green chilis.  I would definitely eat here again.

As I said, the inside is rather weird.  The right side is a hallway with a big square mirrored section parked smack dad in the middle of the room.  I think that is supposed to "hide" the elevator inside.  Be careful or you will walk right into it thinking you are going down a hallway.  

I finally asked the kid seating people in the restaurant.  What WAS this building.  Oh ... it was a mercantile store he said.  With little clothing shops upstairs around the edge.  You know, a mercantile ... they sold cars.

I said ohhhh well a mercantile is NOT a car dealership.  It's a department store.  He was shocked.  I think I ruined his day.

There was a tiny bookstore there, so we walk through to see if there were any new train books for Mr. Chance.  I'm pretty sure he owns every one in existence at this point, but we looked anyway.  This is an example of what we found.  There's lots of quirky stuff here.

I was looking for the old west cowboy part of town ... like this.  I wanted to try and find the same general area and take a "today" picture.  

You have to give it up to Bisbee residents who named this Grassy Park.  It's original I guess. Finally, we are on our way up the hill to find the Pop-Up Art Gallery.  I spotted this on an obscure website and said WHY NOT.  It took a couple of turn arounds since their roads are so screwy.  Dan turned left up a one way VERY narrow road.  THIS IS IT ... keep going!!  

When I say narrow, I mean you could reach out and touch the buildings and railings.  Good grief ... it was barely wide enough for one car and really steep.  There were a couple of times we didn't really know which way to go, but eventually ended up on Brewery Street, which is one way going DOWN the hill.  

I didn't realize until I got back hone that we had FOUND Brewery Gulch.  We were IN it.  It probably looked very similar back in the day, because there were people who very much resembled old raggedy miners sitting outside the bars along the entire street.  WAIT ... THERE IT IS!!

Dan hung a quick left and parked the car.  Ummm you're going to be my body guard, right?  No kidding, this definitely looked like the dicey part of town.  I wasn't going to let that stop me though, I headed right on up the stairs.  THAT will be tomorrow's post since I came out alive.  If you haven't seen the Pop Up Art Gallery, you definitely should go check it out.  It's ARTSY and "different" I guess ... rather unique in a mining town.

The story continues tomorrow .........