Bisbee, Arizona

Bisbee is a good starting point for learning about the West for many reasons, not the least of which being that it is the seat of the most singularly western county in America* -- Cochise.

While for all of the territorial period, and for the early years following statehood, Tombstone was the county seat, Bisbee was there from the beginning, an emerging city during the heyday of Tombstone and the economic powerhouse from about 1885 until the cessation of mining in 1975.

Valuable metals were discovered in the area that was to become Bisbee at the same time as those in what was to become Tombstone, 1877. Because what Ed Schieffelin discovered to the north was silver, Tombstone would develop rapidly, while the base metals in the Mule Mountains made for a slower start for Bisbee.

But while the boom would last for only a few years in Tombstone, once the demand for copper around the world kept increasing

*This isn't an opinion I conceived, but one adopted from Carlos Schwantes, a historian of the American West who has visited every county in the West. Schwantes is currently St. Louis Mercantile Library Endowed Professor in Transportation Studies at the University of Missouri St. Louis. He is author/editor of 15 books on the West and on transportation, including one on Bisbee.