Jerome

The late Kate Wolf penned one of my favorite song lyrics:

Houses cling to mountains like miners cling to dreams…They hold on for so long then they just let go…

Kate wrote this while visiting friends in the near ghost town of Jerome, Arizona.  So I have been staying with my brother in the beautiful town of Cottonwood. Yesterday, we went east to the red rocks of Sedona. Today we drove five miles northwest and up to Jerome. Jerome sits at 6200 feet above sea level on Mount Cleopatra. It was, for many years, the largest copper mine in the USA. They also mined gold, silver, and zinc. 30,000 people lived on the mountain at its peak. The mining was both open pit and underground. Eventually, the ore ran out and the population dwindled to 20,000, then 10,000, then 5000, then 500, then it became a ghost town.  Today 500 hearty souls have returned. There is a museum, hotel, and some houses that have not collapsed over time from the mining beneath.  And there are also the views !!!

If you look k closely at the pic on the bottom left, you can make out the red rock of Sedona. Cottonwood is between the two sets of mountains at 3000 feet.  This is a special piece of Earth and I am fortunate to have a brother who has chosen to make it home.