[Source: Eric Berg, Save Old Sasco] -- The historic ghost town of Sasco near Picacho Peak is threatened. It was part of a large piece of land recently acquired by the Wolfswinkel Group for a large master-planned community. Sasco (which stands for Southern Arizona Smelting Company) was founded in 1907 as the smelter town for the Silverbell copper mines owned by the Imperial Copper Company. The mine and smelter were owned by The Development Company of America which also owned the Tombstone Consolidated Mines company, the Congress Mine near Wickenburg, and the Poland mines near Prescott. The DCA was run by businessmen Frank Murphy, Elipthlet Gage, and Henry M. Robinson with William F. Staunton as their head engineer. Operations at the smelter began in 1908 and continued until the DCA went bankrupt in 1911 (due partially to the flooding of the Tombstone mines). Silverbell and Sasco were purchased by the powerful American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) in 1916 to take advantage of high copper prices during WWI. The smelter was permanently closed in 1919 and the town quickly died away thereafter.Despite its short life, Sasco has some of the most extensive remains of any Arizona ghost town. There are the roofless shells of two stone buildings including one multi-room structure that was probably a hotel and a two-room concrete jail. There are recognizable and identifiable foundations of numerous other structures including the company-ran boarding house, the superintendent’s house, and the company office (whose concrete vault is still standing). For an interesting human touch, there is a small stone water fountain that once sat in the middle of a small garden. The most extensive remains however, are of the smelting complex. The large and interesting concrete foundations of the smelter, power house, railroad platform, company store, ore bins, and sampling mill are all still in place. The smelter foundations still show the burned impressions left by the settlers where the molten ore was separated into copper and waste materials. There is also a small slag dump and a well-preserved cemetery.
Given its extensive ruins, important history, and easy access to the general public, it would make an ideal historic site for the description of Arizona's early mining history. Given its close location to the Ironwood National Monument, it seems like it would be the perfect place for a land swap where the Sasco area is added to the nearby National Monument and the developers are given an equivalent piece of land on a different edge of their section.
[Note: For more information about efforts to SOS (Save Old Sasco), contact Eric Berg. Click here for a background article in the Tucson Citizen. Photo source: Larry Copenhaver, Tucson Citizen.]
