Jerome, Arizona
An old copper-mining town built right on the steep, rocky slope of Mingus Mountain. Now nearly a ghost town, it was one of the early Arizona's wildest, toughest communities.
Ektachrome by R. M. Fronske
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Jerome, Arizona
For over sixty years this famous little mining town with a rip-roaring post, has clung to the 33 degree slope of Cleopatra Mountain. Gravity, erosion and jarring blasts of the big copper mine above threaten to drop the precariously situated buildings into the canyons below.
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A mining town named Jerome was established on the side of Cleopatra Hill in 1883. It was named for Eugene Murray Jerome, a New York investor who owned the mineral rights and financed mining there. Eugene Jerome never visited his namesake town. Jerome was incorporated as a town on 8 March 1889.
The town housed the workers in the nearby United Verde Mine, which was to produce over 1 billion dollars in copper, gold and silver over the next 70 years.
Jerome became a notorious "wild west" town, a hotbed of prostitution, gambling, and more vices. On 5 February 1903, the New York Sun proclaimed Jerome to be "the wickedest town in the West".
In 1915 the population of Jerome was estimated at 2,500. Today it has a population of only around 350.
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