Lavender Pit

The Lavender Pit is a former open-pit copper mine beside Bisbee's historic center. By the end of mining it covered 300 acres and reached 900 feet deep, ten times the size of the older Sacramento Pit before it. Its name has nothing to do with color: it honors Harrison M. Lavender, vice president and general manager of the Phelps Dodge Corporation.

Work on the pit began in 1951 and it was dedicated in 1954. Phelps Dodge invested $25 million in it, hoping to produce 38,000 tons of copper a year by 1955. Electric shovels four times the size of the old steam shovels did the digging, and trucks replaced the rail-mounted ore cars. In all, 351 million tons of rock were removed to produce 600,000 tons of copper. Mining ended in 1975, after twenty-four years.

The pit came at a cost to the town. It was dug where U.S. Highway 80 had run between Bisbee and Lowell, lined with businesses and homes. About 250 homes and businesses made way for it, a hundred homes were moved to Saginaw, and the highway was rebuilt along what is now the pit's east rim. The last building moved was the 300-ton brick office of the Shattuck and Denn Mining Company, inched 3,000 feet to its new site.

Arizona State Parks lists the Lavender Pit among Bisbee's sights alongside the Copper Queen Mine Tour. It is an inactive mine site, not a park, and no official page describes visitor facilities.