Bisbee, Southern Arizona

I knew he was a snake the minute I saw him sitting in his little red sedan in the near-empty parking lot across from the Bisbee Grand Hotel. A striking caricature of Geico's Gecko, this skinny, twenty-something, clean-shaven oddity with the loping gate had no business with that gorgeous Hispanic brunette driving the getaway car. Something was up. We parked near the back of the lot – the Yukon packed to the gills with our precious possessions - and as we walked across the spread of asphalt I caught them out of the corner of my eye staring us down and glancing over at the rig. We continued walking, enthralled by the beautiful buildings that will take your breath away in this quaint gem of a town, when, on cue, that inexplicable force that moves us from time to time, moved my head to the right just as we were turning the corner. And there he was, three steps from our overloaded SUV taking those big hurried strides.

Like the days of old, nefarious miscreants evidently continue to haunt the architectural masterpiece we know today as Bisbee which was founded in 1880; a mile-high city of historical and contemporary renown tucked in the mineral-rich Mule Mountains within spitting distance of Old Mexico and all of that stuff down there. With a penchant for Old World architecture, Bisbee, where streets are narrow and winding, and buildings are large and elegant, or old and moldy and cling to precipitous slopes, and where the air is filled with the rough and tumble lore of America's mining heyday, is Old Europe. And who doesn't love Old Europe? Just 20 minutes from Tombstone of Wyatt Earp fame, Bisbee is a must see and a must do for anyone traveling through Cochise country, where strife, greed, hard work and great danger, not to mention mountains of money to be had, defined the landscape and lives of thousands of characters over the last 100 years.

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Bisbee exists because of incredibly vast quantities of precious minerals that have been clawed out of these rough mountains, primarily by the Phelps Dodge Corporation, and other lesser mining entities. The numbers are astounding, numbers which turned Bisbee into one of the richest mineral sites in the world and which coughed up eight billion pounds of copper, three million ounces of gold, plus lead, zinc and silver. The place was also crawling with ites – you've got your azurite and your aragonite, your wulfenite and malachite, not to mention your cuperites, and there's even a few vugs if you know where to look; exquisite specimens of copper-based minerals that are housed in museums around the world. Ugly but interesting, you can see the layered, gouged terrain of open-pit excavations for free just off the highway, and what a hole that is. Word of caution: Don't cross the fence, don't trip and tumble over the edge, but if you do and survive the fall and get real thirsty, don't drink the black sludge in that filthy pond pooled at the bottom of the pit. A more civilized way of experiencing mining and its tradition is to join hundreds of thousands of other visitors on a Queen Mine Tour. Phelps Dodge continued operations up until 1975, and when it shut down some very prudent individuals got together and cleared out tons of rocky debris and re-timbered some of those subterranean tunnels, turning the Queen Mine into the premier tourist attraction in the area. Outfitted in miners hats, yellow slickers and hard hats, visitors descend 1,500 feet by train into the bowels of history guided by former miners who will elaborate and instruct, tell tales of harrow and daring-do, and convey the challenges and difficulties of hard-rock mining which those topside take so readily for granted. Life was not always easy for Bisbee-ites. The barren mountains were once timbered, then stripped, and with the monsoon rains came damaging floods that caused untold grief. Fires ravaged the downtown in 1908 turning much of the commercial district into an ash heap, the kind of conflagration that necessitated the willful blowing-up of other buildings to create fire breaks to slow the flames' advance. Polluting smelters poured such filth into the air it made the town's people gag and cry, but rarely complain – they were making that much money. And in 1917 Phelps Dodge deported 1,000 striking I.W.W. miners who sought to unionize out of town - shipped them out like cattle, back when the unthinkable was thinkable. But times have changed. Gone are the 47 raucous saloons wedged into Brewery Gulch, and the inevitable “Shady Ladies” lounging about day and night. Once the miners drifted off when Phelps Dodge shut down in '75, artists and hippies discovered the relatively cheap and charming community, and over the years, with other gathering entrepreneurs, have turned this “quirky” city into a premier artist enclave, rich in culture and brimming with fine art, gourmet restaurants, refurbished B & Bs, book stores, specialty shops, theater, coffee houses and antique stores. Restoration of these incredible architectural works of art is ongoing, and is of such quality that it has continually attracted, over the years, millions of visitors. During the 1990s baby-boomers joined the inward migration, in addition to retirees who know a good thing when they see it. Walking up and down the narrow stairways and through cramped alleyways one senses art oozing from every cracked pore and crooked ascending step; a creative genuine funk interspersed with the upscale, such as the world-famous and elegant Copper Queen Hotel, the 100-year-old flagship of lodging in Bisbee. Quite beautiful, I must say. As for the Gecko trying to steal my car seven years ago, I watched incredulously as he glanced my way, then hid behind the Yukon, dumb enough to think I didn't see him. The only thing I could do was stroll over to where he was trying to hide, and peek at him around the fender squatting on his haunches like some Vietnamese rice farmer. He looks up, our eyes meet, and then with a big confessional grin he rises and lopes back to his little red sedan, hops in and takes off to find another unsuspecting victim, no doubt; that beautiful girl shifting gears and burning rubber and roaring out of town in a blur. You know the moral of this story. Don't leave your valuables unattended in your vehicle. But enjoy Bisbee, a true diamond in the rough landscape of rugged Southern Arizona, a little piece of Europe right there on the border with Old Mexico.