Busy in Bisbee

About two hours from Tucson by car, Bisbee is perfect for a day trip or weekend away.

Shades of green suffuse the typical desert browns and beiges. Instead of Southwestern-style adobe houses sprawled into neighborhoods, the architecture is small and tight.

Two-story houses, full of windows and trimmed with eaves, shutters and porches, are stacked and packed together, more like San Francisco than Tucson.

Judy Donaldson, who spent a few days vacationing in the town from the Phoenix area, described it as "absolutely darling" and "geographically extraordinary."

The narrow streets often leave enough room for only one car — not that traffic poses much of a problem.

Bisbee residents tend to get around the main area of the town of about 6,000 on foot, and the old section, where most of the shops are, is small enough that you'll likely run into the same people several times over the course of a day.

Three areas come together in Bisbee: Old Bisbee and the largely residential Warren and San Jose.

Forgive the clichés, but Bisbee is quaint and picturesque with its hills, pastel houses and gossip-filled street corners.

It is also still very much alive with history.

Founded in 1880 as a mining camp that over the course of a century would produce 8 billion pounds of copper, more than 6 million pounds of silver and 175,000 pounds of gold, the town has deftly turned its former industry into a tourist draw.

At Queen Mine Tours, B.J. "Pete" Oller, who spent 30 years working underground, schools visitors about life as a miner. His stories, such as how miners would steal the bosses' underground bikes and blame it on a ghost, keep the tour interesting, and visitors leave with a picture of a day in the mine.

Bisbee clings to its history — the word "copper" shows up often in the names of hotels, restaurants and shops, and locals direct visitors to museums.

But the town's legacy has expanded, and today its personality is unmistakably influenced by the crop of artists that moved in after the mining boom ended.

Jill Crozier, who crafts jewelry, ended up in Bisbee by accident. She headed west after a dart thrown at a map ended up in Las Cruces, N.M. She didn't love it, so she moved on to Arizona eight years ago.

Now she spends a few months a year selling her sterling silver jewelry in Bisbee.

Antique shops, jewelry stores and art galleries full of colorful, one-of-a-kind pieces crowd Main Street and the Copper Queen Plaza in the center of town.

But it's worth a visitor's time to move off the beaten path to find people like David Hallman.

The former West Virginia resident sets up a table in Peddler's Alley in Old Bisbee on weekends to sell his hand-carved wooden bowls and plates.

Starting with large blocks of cherry, oak and other woods, Hallman carves with the grain to create the usable art pieces. A finish adds class and sheen. Pieces start at about $20.

He estimates his customer base is about half locals and half tourists, which is a pretty good estimate for Bisbee's makeup.

Leni and Scott Bowman, who live in Goodyear, made a second trip to Bisbee for a relaxing weekend. They say it's not the place to come for fast-paced entertainment, but they enjoy it so much they're thinking of purchasing a retirement home in the area.

Enjoy the town at a leisurely pace, they recommend.

"It's so laid-back," Leni Bowman says, adding that the $90-a-night bed and breakfast where they were staying, Audrey's Inn, is great. Though they've been exploring the town through the morning and afternoon, looking for antiques and to expand Leni's collection of ceramic vegetables, "we've hardly left Main Street," Scott Bowman admits.

Tourists walk up and down Main Street, but locals are found more easily along the neighborhood streets or the taverns on Brewery Avenue, home to St. Elmo's Bar and the Stock Exchange Bar. The name of the latter is historical — an entire wall is covered with an old stock exchange board.

Outside Copper Queen Plaza, the former mercantile that now houses a coffee shop, visitors' bureau and a restaurant, observers stop in front of the large windows of Kate Drew-Wilkinson's bead shop to watch the well-known bead maker at her craft.

Using shards of colored glass, she melts the materials and forms them into three-dimensional paintings. Her Tidepool collection, made of deep greens and full and translucent blues, shimmer with the movement of the sun and sea. Wilkinson came to Bisbee for a visit in the early '90s and never managed to leave.

She describes it as a place for those "who are self-sufficient in their pleasures."

In the decade she's been there, the town has grown. It now has a day spa, Monsoon Face and Body, and "even the cops are beginning to give tickets and nasty things like that," she says.

Wilkinson is a prototypical Bisbee resident. Before settling down in Arizona, she traveled widely. She's well-known and successful in her field.

Now, she has given herself over to small-town life with like-minded peers. She knows the names of the store owners on the strip and often can recite their histories, as well.

She says Bisbee is her nest.

"I knew when I got here," she says, "that I'd found home."

l Bisbee Grand Hotel, 61 Main St.: Rates are $79-$179 a night for this bed and breakfast. 1-800-421-1909.

l Inn at Castle Rock, 112 Tombstone Canyon Road: This former miners' boarding house has hillside gardens and a fish pond. Rates are $69-$94. 1-800-566-4449.

l Copper Queen Hotel, 11 Howell Ave.: This hotel, which is allegedly haunted, has a restaurant and swimming pool. $94-$177. 1-520-432-2216.

l Audrey's Inn, 20 Brewery Ave.: The suites at the inn have kitchens and sleep four. $95-$105. 1-888-437-4263.

l For more places to stay, call the Bisbee Visitor Center, 1-520-432-3554. It keeps a list of more than 30 spots.

l Queen Mine Tour, 118 Arizona St.: Groups leave at 9 a.m., 10:30 a.m., noon, 2 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. daily and cost $12 for adults and $5 for ages 4-15.

l Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum, No. 5 Copper Queen Plaza: Visitors will find an extensive collection of historical books and documents, exhibits on the town's history and more than $6 million worth of minerals in a few small cases.