Bisbee is an old mining town between Tombstone and Mexico, about 30 miles from the Mexican border. Old Bisbee is the (you guessed it) old part of town, and it's built up the side of a mountain. Most of the buildings have withstood the ravages of the harsh Arizona sun and, at 5,300 feet elevation, the cold winters and snows, because they built them primarily with bricks.
When the mining stopped years ago, the town died too. Years later it became a popular place for hippies, artists, and their ilk to repopulate, so the real estate was bought up for a song by anyone who wanted to live in such a remote place with such cool buildings.
Now all the old stores along the narrow twisting climbing streets offer mostly arts, crafts, jewelry, antiques, and really weird clothing and other stuff. It's really cool going into them because most of them are two stories plus basements, and are pretty much original inside. It's a good place for people-watching, too, as a lot of the locals have their own dress code.
So here's my photo tour of Bisbee. First of all, the old open-pit Lavender mine just a couple of miles south of old Bisbee. Apparently they started it by loading a mountain full of dynamite and blowing the top clean off. The bottom of this pit is wwwaaaayyyyyyy down there, I would guess a couple of thousand feet. At the bottom is a body of water. It is blood red. It looks absolutely repulsive, like a lake of fetid blood. The water is coloured by the same minerals that lend their hue to the surrounding hills. Unfortunately, the lake was in the shadows when we were there and the camera couldn't pick up the colour, but just take my word for it:
Now, the town of Old Bisbee:
