In 1881, Bisbee was a collection of 300 people living in canvas tents, scrambling after copper ore in the Arizona desert. By 1904, the population had exploded to 10,000, and the transformation was complete. Wood and adobe gave way to brick; candlelight surrendered to electric; and the narrow streets of Main, Howell, and Brewery Gulch were paved with bricks. The town incorporated in 1902, gaining streetcars in 1908 that clanged through the canyons until buses replaced them in 1929. As Bisbee's prosperity grew, it claimed the Cochise County seat from neighboring Tombstone in 1929, cementing its position as the region's center of commerce and power.

Walk through the district today and you encounter a living catalog of American architectural styles: Victorian Italianate storefronts, Second Renaissance Revival commercial buildings, Art Deco flourishes on the 1931 courthouse, and Mission Revival churches. The Pythian Castle rises with its distinctive clock tower, while the Copper Queen Hotel and Library showcase the civic pride that Phelps Dodge money could buy. What makes this collection remarkable is its completeness. When other towns prospered, they demolished their past to build anew. When Bisbee's mines closed, the wrecking balls never arrived. The Castle Rock Hotel, the Muheim Block, the Letson Building, architectural treasures by designers Henry Trost and Frederick C. Hurst, all survive because economic stagnation proved to be inadvertent preservation.

The canyon that gave Bisbee its dramatic setting also delivered disaster. In 1890, a twenty-foot wall of water swept through town in the darkness, claiming lives and destroying property. Floods struck again in 1886 and 1908, the latter depositing feet of mud inside the post office. That same year, fire tore through Main Street's commercial core, causing $500,000 in damage. These catastrophes forced the town to install flood abatement systems and public water infrastructure for firefighting, investments that helped preserve what the mines had built. The town learned to fight for its survival long before it had to fight economic decline.

The copper industry began retreating after World War I, suppressed by wartime stockpiles and competition from South American deposits. The Great Depression deepened the wound. Bisbee adapted with new extraction methods: the Sacramento Hill open pit operated from 1917 to 1929, and the massive Lavender Pit, one of the largest open-pit copper mines in the world, carved into the landscape from 1951 to 1974. But when the Copper Queen Mine ceased operations in 1975, Bisbee's mining era effectively ended. The company town built by Phelps Dodge became something else entirely, a bohemian refuge for artists and retirees drawn by cheap rent and stunning architecture.

The physical evidence of Phelps Dodge's dominance remains everywhere. The company built the Copper Queen Hospital, funded the YMCA, and constructed the library and post office that anchor Main Street. The General Office Building and Mercantile still stand at one end of the historic district, monuments to corporate paternalism in an era before such arrangements seemed strange. Lodging houses built for miners line the steep streets, now converted to bed-and-breakfasts. The district earned its place on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, recognition that this collection of commercial, residential, and institutional buildings from 1890 to 1915 constitutes an irreplaceable record of how America built its industrial wealth.