The Mine Closure That Brought Rail to Globe

by Patricia Sanders

On the north end of Globe, from US 60 you can see the relics of a copper mine –called the Old Dominion – that made Globe what it was for many decades, and gained fame as one of the richest mines in the state. In fact, it would be fair to say Globe as we know it might never have existed without the Old Dominion Mine.

The vein at Old Dominion was discovered in 1874, and the mine soon became an economic engine in what was then just a mining camp. Globe was founded in 1876, and for the next seventy-odd years, “As the mine grew, so did Globe.”

In 1897, the Silver Belt said the Old Dominion “for many years has been widely known as one of the great copper mines of Arizona...with great possibilities for the future.”

The Silver Belt reporter had taken a brief tour of the mine, but said to walk through the entire works would take three days.

But on April 20, 1897, the Old Dominion suddenly shut down for an undetermined period of time.

Some 200 men were put out of work, and miners were seen leaving town on freight wagons in a mass exodus. All for no apparent reason.

But the editors of the Silver Belt had a good guess – or inside information. They asserted the closure was a cutthroat move on the part of the mine’s owners on the East Coast, who were desperate to get the railroad extended to Globe.

The Gila Valley, Globe & Northern railway had been talking for years about bringing the road to Globe, but it hadn’t happened yet. The Silver Belt editors believed the mine owners were coercing the GVG&N into coming to Globe by shutting the mine down. It could be that high transportation costs were cutting into the mine’s profits such that the owners weren’t willing to continue to run the mine until the railroad arrived.

The Silver Belt editor estimated the shutdown could last six months or more. He turned out to be wrong. It was much longer than that.

But the mine owners’ gambit, if that was what it was, seems to have worked in the end. The first week of January 1898, the GVG&N signed a contract to build rail from Globe to Geronimo, which would solve the Old Dominion’s transportation problem.

Charles Hayden, the influential Arizona businessman and politician, estimated the railroad would cut the mine’s transportation costs by one-third, and said, “Upon the completion of the railroad the mine should be an immediate earner of money.”

The Old Dominion finally resumed smelting on the 21st of September, 1898, after being closed down for seventeen months.

The first GVG&N train pulled into Globe in late November 1898.

While construction on the railroad was being completed, the Old Dominion had been stockpiling copper to ship. January 1899 saw the mine ship 1.2 million pounds of copper by rail.

The mine prospered – and so did Globe –during the boom years that followed. Some months saw the Old Dominion ship over 2 million pounds of copper. Many of the city’s historic structures were built during that same time – mostly from 1904 to 1910. And the Old Dominion continued to serve as a pillar of Globe’s industrial economy until the early 1920s.

The smelter permanently closed in 1924. In its lifetime, the Old Dominion had produced around 800 million pounds of copper, returned some $134 million to its owners and shareholders – and helped make Globe what it is today.