Copper Creek is a

ghost town A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

Pinal County Pinal County is a county in the central part of the U.S. state of Arizona. According to the 2020 census, the population of the county was 425,264, making it Arizona's third-most populous county. The county seat is Florence. The county was est ...

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

, United States. Copper Creek is located in a canyon in the

Galiuro Mountains The Galiuro Mountains are a large sky island mountain range of southeast Arizona, United States. It is a northerly mountain range in the Madrean Sky Islands region of southeast Arizona, northern Sonora in northwestern Mexico, and the extreme ...

History

This town once had around 50 buildings. It had a peak population of approximately 500. Its

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

was established March 6, 1906, and was disestablished August 31, 1942. A short-lived

narrow-gauge railway A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge (distance between the rails) narrower than . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with tighter cur ...

line was built in 1913, with the locomotive and cars carried overland from the railhead at Winkelman. Notable remains of the old town include the foundations of the post office and the shell of the Sibley Mansion.

Geology

The Copper Creek

mining Mining is the Resource extraction, extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agriculture, agricultural processes, or feasib ...

district contains a substantial copper deposit; in recent years, several companies have proposed opening a mine there. The district hosts more than 500 mineralized breccia pipes. Buried porphyry-style, stockwork copper mineralization has attracted exploration interest in recent years.

Geography

Copper Creek is about ten miles east of the community of

Mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus.'' They lived from the late Miocene epoch (from around 6.2 million years ago) into the Holocene until about 4,000 years ago, with mammoth species at various times inhabi ...

, via a rough dirt road.

References

External links

Faraday Copper
Canada Mining Company Mining Copper Creek *

– Ghost Town of the Month at azghosttowns.com {{authority control Ghost towns in Arizona 1906 establishments in Arizona Territory Populated places established in 1906 Mining communities in Arizona Former populated places in Pinal County, Arizona