Jerome Mine Museum

The Jerome Historical Society has run this modest museum on Main Street since the early 1950s, around the time the mines closed. At $2 it's an easy addition to a walk through town. The society says the museum is shifting its focus from mining alone to the people who made Jerome what it was, and the displays on the Chinese community and on Italian, Slav, Mexican, Irish and Russian residents are its most interesting feature.

The collection includes the Colt pistol that Marshal Johnny Hudgens used to shoot three vigilantes on Main Street, drills, ore carts, carbide lamps, hand-forged candlesticks and underground "potty cars". There's also a laundry machine from a Jerome Chinese laundry, panoramic photographs of miners and the smelters, hospital equipment and gambling gear. Purchases at the gift shop help fund the society's preservation of Jerome's buildings.

Treat it as a complement to Jerome State Historic Park rather than a substitute: the state park explains the mines and the Douglas family, and this explains the town. The society's archives, with over 11,000 photographs, are open to researchers separately.