The following article dives into the history (postal and otherwise) of Tyrone, NM, a source of turquoise and copper for both the area's indigenous tribes and white settlers. The article was submitted by APS Affiliate Arizona & New Mexico Postal History Society as an Article of Distinction for 2023 and was written by the Society's membership director and editor of The Roadrunner, Robert L. Conley for the November 2023 edition of the journal. To learn more about the AZ & NM Postal History Society, visit their website.
To read other Articles of Distinction, click here.
Known today for their vast resources of copper ore, the Little Burro Mountains of Grant County, New Mexico were first famous for their deposits of turquoise. For countless generations, until interrupted by non-indigenous visitors, Native Americans operated shallow mines to extract the decorative blue-green stone.
The name of the first white man to discover turquoise here is unknown, but it is said that anyone who entered the area before the early 1870s was never seen alive again. The Apache were thought to be to blame. But by 1879, prospectors had staked out workable claims and, perhaps due to safety in numbers, were less prone to disappearing. The turquoise found here, just a dozen or so miles southwest of Silver City, was judged to be at least equal with the stones from the best mines in Persia – and good enough to gift President McKinley during his tour of New Mexico in 1901.
Despite the world-class quality of the turquoise, and the comparative ease of extraction, it didn't take long for prospectors to prefer copper over the semi-precious stone. In 1881, a mining camp named Paschal was established (Figure 1). Paschal took only a year to become the biggest copper camp in all of New Mexico Territory, supporting over 500 men. The Paschal Post Office opened on January 23, 1882.
The post office in Paschal went through three postmasters before it closed down on November 13, 1883, less than 2 years after opening. Only two postmarks are known to have been used, the first shown in Figure 2. The New Mexico Territorial Postmark Catalog (NMTPC) Paschal Type 1 postmark is very faint – note the fancy star killer. The CDS tracing is seen in Figure 3. The NMTPC Paschal Type 2 is identical to the Type 1, apart from the removal of the postmaster's name. There is only one known surviving example of each type.
FIGURE 1. This 1886 map shows Paschal, situated about 12 miles southwest of Silver City. Beyond the map, Lordsburg is 26 miles farther southwest and Deming is 41 miles to Paschal's southeast, down the railroad line.
FIGURE 2. The only known surviving example of Paschal, Type 1.
FIGURE 3. Tracing of the NMTPC Paschal Type 1 CDS.
The nature of mining camps is such that nothing is certain except that things will change, for better or worse, usually unpredictably, sometimes overnight. And Paschal was no different – it was the biggest boom town around in 1880-1882, but by some point in 1883, it was nearly deserted. Contemporary newspapers are silent as to the reasons for the rapid exit, however one might speculate that the 1883 abandonment of Clairmont and establishment of Cooney (see The Roadrunner #150-7), some 65 miles up the road, and surrounded by silver mines, may have been a related occurence.
In any case, absolute abandonment is uncommon, and a few prospectors and miners remained in the Paschal area while small mining companies like Allesandro Mining, Comanche Mining and Smelting, Trinidad Smelting Company, and Chemung Copper entered the fray, exploring and buying out the even-smaller operators. The eventual result, over the next 20 or so years, was the transfer of the many tiny, disparate claims to fewer, larger owners. Within that general trend of consolidation, in the very early 1900s, a man with a lot of luck, or plenty of smarts, Theodore Carter, established the Burro Mountain Copper Company (BMCC) and found richer ore around the old copper mines in the vicinity of Paschal.
Carter was good at attracting money from distant, big-city investors, and the cashed-up BMCC bought up as many claims as it could get. For his headquarters, Carter established a new town over the old site of the more-or-less empty Paschal. He called it Leopold in honor of some of his biggest Chicago-based investors. BMCC built roads, a concentrating plant and improved the general infrastructure in and around Leopold.
The Leopold Post Office opened in George Sublett's General Store on November 14, 1904. The population of the town was then said to be about 400 residents.
Three cancelling devices are reported for Leopold – NMTPC Type 1, seen in Figure 4, is a Doane Type 2/1, known in service until November, 1909. A 4-Bar Type A/2 cancel followed, with at least two known strikes prior to statehood. A partial tracing of NMTPC Leopold Type 2 is seen in Figure 5. The Catalog also reports a CDS of 28mm diameter (Type 3), however this remains to be sighted and documented.
FIGURE 4. NMTPC Leopold Type 1, Doane Type 2/1 seen on a post card.
FIGURE 5. Partial tracing of NMTPC Leopold Type 2.
Within two years of the establishment of the Leopold Post Office, another mining camp named Tyrone had sprouted less than two miles to the northeast, as seen in Figure 6. Named by a homesick Irishman, Tyrone's post office opened on October 15, 1906, and was added to Star Route 67378, the six-times-a-week service between Silver City and Leopold.
Things must have really been heating-up in the Little Burro Mountains to put two post offices so close together. Of course, just like any other typical mining towns, Leopold and Tyrone were developed without much forethought or planning; just an eclectic, disorganized, mish-mash of tents, lean-tos, shanties, and false-fronts. All that mattered was that these structures provided shelter.
FIGURE 6. A 1907 map showing the Little Burro Mountains area – including Leopold and Tyrone.
The Tyrone Post Office started with a provisional, straight-line cancel, NMTPC Type A, with only one surviving strike known – a tracing is shown in Figure 7. Figure 8 illustrates Tyrone's first POD-issued device, NMTPC Type 1, a 4-Bar Type A/1. On the front page is illustrated a lovely strike of NMTPC Tyrone Type 2, a non-standard cancel, of which at least six examples survive.
FIGURE 7. Tracing of NMTPC Tyrone Type A.
FIGURE 8. Pre-Christmas, 1906 post card with an almost-new 4-Bar Type A/1 postmark – NMTPC Tyrone Type 1.
By May, 1908, just 18 months after it opened, the Tyrone Post Office was already onto its fourth device – NMTPC Tyrone Type 3, closely resembling Type 2 – tracing provided in Figure 9. Not yet done, another device was needed before statehood was achieved – a 4-Bar Type A/2, NMTPC Type 4, first seen in December, 1909. An example of that postmark and its tracing can be seen in Figures 10 and 11.
FIGURE 9. A tracing of NMTPC Tyrone Type 3.
FIGURE 10. Partial tracing of NMTPC Tyrone Type 4.
FIGURE 11. Post card with a faint strike of the NMTPC Tyrone Type 4 cancel.
By 1909, with the majority of the claims in the mountains consolidated in the hands of just a few corporate owners, and two working towns fully established, Carter quit the copper extraction business. Phelps, Dodge & Co. (Phelps Dodge) acquired Carter's Burro Mountain Copper Company, which owned 56 mining claims on about 1,000 acres. Some 2 million tons of ore had already been taken, but Phelps Dodge bought it anyway, and announced its intention to hold it in "reserve" for later use. There were still some residual claims in the mountains owned by others, but Phelps Dodge now controlled the lion's share.
The post office at Leopold shifted about ¾ mile to the south later in 1909, but its days were numbered when Phelps Dodge relocated its new subsidiary's headquarters from there to Tyrone in 1912. In March, 1914, Leopold's post office closed its doors and its mail went to Tyrone. Star Routes 67286 (to Silver City) and 67349 (to White Signal) henceforth omitted Leopold, both saving 2.62 miles.
Phelps Dodge was no newcomer – it had been part of the consolidation process since 1905, buying up claims in competition with BMCC and others. It entered copper mining back in 1885 with the incredibly fortunate acquisition of the Copper Queen mine near Bisbee, Arizona Territory. This mine was subsequently discovered to have the richest copper vein in American mining history. By 1900, Phelps Dodge was the dominant copper producer in the Southwest – and by 1909, Arizona was the world's largest producer of copper. Phelps Dodge owned other mines, as well as thousands of acres of undeveloped mineral deposits. Phelps Dodge wasn't just into metal – it was a huge conglomerate – also owning New Mexico's second-largest railroad, the El Paso & Southwest (EP&SW) and the Dawson coal mine in Colfax County.
However, towards the end of the first decade of the new century, Phelps Dodge and other Arizona mine operators faced substantial industrial relations problems. Arizona Territory was turning into a paradise for pro-worker, anti-business organizers. There was also a growing resentment by American workers against their Mexican colleagues. The latter worked for less, did not complain about conditions, and tolerated less-safe work practices. Miners like Phelps Dodge probably could see things only getting worse before they got better. Perhaps, this was a further incentive to gain control of the BMCC claims, all of which were safely inside the boundaries of New Mexico Territory.
In 1912, the new State of Arizona adopted the most pro-labor constitution in the nation. By early 1913, Phelps Dodge was probably turning pessimistic on its Arizona assets, encouraging it to work toward opening up the Tyrone "reserve." While the ore in Tyrone was of a much-inferior grade to Bisbee's, new technologies still rendered Tyrone's ore economically viable.
Things did, in fact, continue to deteriorate for Arizona mine operators. By 1915, the situation was so dire that some mining companies threatened to flood their mines, cease business and exit Arizona altogether.
But before the claims around Tyrone and Leopold could be exploited, Phelps Dodge had plenty of preparation to do. In August, 1913, the EP&SW negotiated the rights to use the track that the Atcheson, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad owned, linking Silver City, Deming, and Whitewater. Within a few months, the EP&SW had laid track from Whitewater to Tyrone, and a mile-long tunnel between the Tyrone and Leopold mines was nearly completed. They also installed an electric power station and ore concentrator at Tyrone, all before 1913 was done.
By the end of 1914, with the war in Europe only six months old, copper for munitions and other military purposes was in great demand. The price of copper sky-rocketed. Fortunately for Phelps Dodge, their mines in the Little Burro Mountains had plenty of copper. However, notwithstanding all the preparations starting in mid-1913, it still had not addressed the accommodation issues – there was no way that the two old shanty towns of Tyrone and Leopold would cope with the
massive amount of manpower needed to work the mines. So, the decision was made to build a new town.
And with that, Mrs. Dodge, the wife of major shareholder, Cleveland Dodge, had the notion to build the most beautiful mining town ever seen. The mining industry was unfavorably viewed by the general public at this time – it had a big image problem everywhere, not just in Arizona. Perhaps seeing an opportunity to correct that perception, Mr. Dodge persuaded his board to go along with his wife's idea. Phelps Dodge was to jettison the existing and inadequate Leopold and Tyrone mining camps, and build a mining town using only the finest materials and craftsmanship. No more shanties, slums, saloons, and open sewers. Only the best would do!
But who to design such a big project? The world's most celebrated architect, of course – the man who had designed the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, St. Thomas's Church in New York City, the State Capitol in Lincoln, Nebraska and the Panama-California International Exposition in San Diego – Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue.
In April, 1915, Phelps Dodge announced to the world that an ultra-modern, master-planned city, designed by the great Goodhue, was to be built at Tyrone. Goodhue's plans included accommodation for thousands of workers and their families, a railroad depot, a courthouse and jail, a theater, an opera house, a department store, a garage and service station, a hospital, a school, and two churches. The main part of the original master plan can be seen in Figure 12. Phelps Dodge commenced construction without delay. Figure 13 pinpoints where the original Leopold and Tyrone were, and the site of the new Tyrone.
America entered the war in early 1917, and construction at Tyrone came to an end – war shortages prevented the Catholic Church and opera house from being built. But enough had been done to accommodate 4,000 worker-residents, and Mrs. Dodge's vision of a unique, best-in-the-world, mining town was real. The cost of over $1 million seemed not to concern anyone.
The Phelps Dodge Mercantile Store loomed large over the town square, with a Spanish-tiled mezzanine overlooking the spacious main floor, reached by an elevator and a grand staircase. By far the largest department store in New Mexico, it offered all the necessities of modern life – groceries, clothing, furniture, and even an undertaker. The new town also included several independent retail stores; workers could not complain that they were forced to buy at inflated prices in the company store.
FIGURE 12. The northern-central section of Bertram Goodhue's pre-construction master plan with some key buildings labelled.
Tyrone was designed to be a haven – a utopia – for miners and their families; the unwholesome influences of brothel and saloon were eliminated in favor of company-sponsored movies, concert bands, and town dances. In addition, Phelps Dodge built a large, well-equipped hospital, and a school for 500 pupils.
There were no outside toilets, and all the spent warm air used for heating was vented out, underground, beyond town limits. The railroad depot, with arched colonnades, and floors and walls in the best Italian marble, was something any city would be proud to host. Its waiting rooms featured marble benches with hidden heating underneath. Marble fountains and crystal chandeliers were standard features.
No land for houses or businesses could be privately owned, but had to be built on land leased from the company. Tyrone offered company-built houses to its employees. Racial prejudice against Mexican workers was deeply entrenched and seemingly acceptable – Phelps Dodge openly reasoned that Mexican employees would benefit from the already-built accommodations on offer, rather than simply leasing them land on which they could build shacks or erect tents. Even so, the Mexican employees' houses were segregated from the Americans' houses. Although fewer and smaller than the Americans' residences, Goodhue designed three-room single and group houses with running water and electricity for the Mexicans. Yet, despite being comparatively inferior, they proved so popular that they could not be built fast enough. The company regarded this as very effective in educating the "...Mexican laborer to better methods of living..." and in stabilizing a traditionally transient work force. In Figures 12 and 13, one will note the housing for Mexican families is along a road leading southwest, into a canyon, while that for the American workers is to the west, on the ridge overlooking the town.
FIGURE 13. This 1951 map shows the old Paschal/Leopold town site and the original site of Tyrone. The new Tyrone, designed by Bertram Goodhue, is about a mile to the northeast of the original site.
With the old Tyrone mining town emptying fast, the post office needed a new home. Phelps Dodge granted the USPOD a five-year lease, starting November 5, 1917 at a rate of $552 per year, payable quarterly. The new Tyrone Post Office measured 27 feet, nine inches by 53 feet, two inches, on the first floor of the one-story, hollow-tile premises known as the "Post Office Building," situated on the southwest corner of Bellotal Street and Central Plaza. It had two front entrances and two more on the east side. The lease included a provision that if the post office advanced to "second class," the rent would increase to $840 a year for remainder of the term. Figures 14 and 15 show post cards with two different early statehood-era postmarks.
FIGURE 14. A post card, cancelled December 21, 1918, just six weeks after the end of World War 1.
FIGURE 15. A June, 1920 post card, with an American Flag machine cancel, suggests that the post-war Tyrone Post Office was a rather busy place.
Goodhue didn't let anyone down. Tyrone was indeed Utopia, a perfect place to raise a family. Everything was modern and new. It was peaceful, orderly, clean and safe. Figures 16 to 21 provide some views of the new town.
Phelps Dodge had been wise, or lucky, to have acquired the Tyrone "reserve" in 1909. The problems then brewing in Arizona did not bode well, and the decision to develop the reserve, before the war had started, was certainly a happy convergence of circumstances. The war sent copper prices soaring, and Phelps Dodge was already well-advanced in preparing for operations. Carter's discovery of higher-grade ore, his decision to divest, and the new technologies available, were just other pieces of the puzzle that enabled the utopic Tyrone to be built.
FIGURE 16. A c.1950 postcard view of Tyrone, looking north. The Post Office is in front of the parked car in center. On the left of the picture is the Phelps Dodge Mercantile Department store. Front and center is the railroad depot, tracks removed. The company office building is to the right, across the plaza from the department store.
FIGURE 17. The school, on the northern edge of Tyrone, seen looking south west. Note the houses for the American workers and their families a distance behind the school, up on the ridge in an attractive park-like setting. Courtesy Silver City Museum.
FIGURE 18. Viewing north east, the office building for the Burro Mountain Copper Company.
FIGURE 19. Main entrance to the Burro Mountain Copper Co. office building, showing the ornate stonework. Not bad for a mining town!
FIGURE 20. Colonnades outside the shops (for the independent retailers). Window shoppers could enjoy the cool breezes and shade while they browsed.
FIGURE 21. Tyrone hospital, with elevators, automatic drug dispensers (for the nurses' use) and two operating theaters. The hospital is not shown in the partial master plan (Figure 12), but it is situated in the cluster of buildings to the south east as seen in Figure 13.
Inevitably, the Great War came to an end. Whether Phelps Dodge had considered the consequences of that unprofitable news, is something probably lost to history. Tyrone's continued existence then simply depended on how far and how soon the price of copper fell.
The 1920 U.S. Federal Census was enumerated, 15 months after the Armistice; the Tyrone precinct had 4,062 residents that February night. Almost every head of house was involved in the mining operation. The policy of segregating Mexicans from Americans was still in place. Tyrone was the State of New Mexico's 7th-largest settlement. Utopia was alive.
Early the next year, when mines were closing down all over the country, Cleveland Dodge himself came to Tyrone to deliver the news that operations at the Tyrone mine were also coming to an end. The workers offered to take a 25% pay cut if only the mines and their town could carry on. Dodge declined. In April 1921, the mines in the Little Burro Mountains duly closed, and operations ceased. Utopia was dead.
Phelps Dodge kindly offered free transport to the border at El Paso for any Mexicans who wanted it. With no work available nearby, the population dropped to 700 within a few weeks. A year later, there were said to be about 50 residents.
For the next 40 or so years, as another World War came and went, Tyrone was occupied by a constantly-revolving cast of a few dozen artists, architecture students, writers, and retired folks. The only employer to remain in Tyrone was the United States Post Office. The cover seen in Figure 22 originates from that long, lonely period.
FIGURE 22. The need for an American Flag cancelling machine ended some ten years before this
4-Bar Type C/1 postmark was affixed in 1932.
In 1963, Tyrone's postmaster was interviewed for a newspaper article. She had been the postmaster for the last 20 years, had resided in Tyrone all that time, and she stated that there were 16 families currently resident in the town. A year or two after that, Phelps Dodge resumed mining at Tyrone, as an open-pit mine. The company aimed to start up with 600 employees, ramping up to 1,000. Although there was potentially room for 4,000 at Goodhue's Tyrone, the mining excavations would necessarily engulf the town. Long deceased, Utopia was finally to be buried.
To support the open-pit mining operation, the company bought some land five miles south of Silver City in an area known as Pipeline Draw. There, they built about 200 company houses and a shopping mall. Lacking any originality, sense of irony or deja vu, they named it Phelps Dodge Mercantile. In February, 1968, the Tyrone Post Office moved from its condemned home atop the mountains and into the mall, where it remains to this day.
In the 1980s, the houses at Pipeline Draw ceased to be controlled by the company. There are now 321 homes there, and an active Home Owners' Association. Just like the first Phelps Dodge Mercantile, the second one no longer exists. That space is now used as a rental storage facility – far removed from Utopia.
Readers' comments and questions are welcomed – email: [email protected].
The author is indebted to Valerie Kittell of the Postal History Foundation Library in Tucson, Paige Pinto of the Silver City Chamber of Commerce, and Ashley Smith of the Silver City Museum for their invaluable assistance, images and prompt attention, as well as Larry McBride, Ted Gruber, and Paul Morton for ideas, images, inspiration, and information.
Non-Standard Resources
Crawford, Margaret, "Bertram Goodhue, Walter Douglas and Tyrone, New Mexico," Journal Of Architectural Education (Summer 1989): 25-34.
Hyatt, Robert M., "Million Dollar Ghost Town," Old West Magazine, Winter 1989, pp. 36-39.
Jenkinson, Michael, "Tyrone, The Creation of a Model Ghost Town," The American West Magazine, March 1968, pp. 38-42, 78, 79.
Looney, Ralph, Haunted Highways – The Ghost Towns of New Mexico (Albuquerque, N. Mex., 1968), 184-190.
Maleski, Patricia F., Echoes of the Past – New Mexico's Ghost Towns (Albuquerque, N. Mex., 1972), 231-236.
Sherman, James E. and Barbara H., Ghost Towns and Mining Camps of New Mexico, (Norman, Okla.,1975), 212-216.
Spain, Larry, "The Enchanted Ghost," Desert Magazine, February 1966, pp. 16-19.
Varney, Philip, New Mexico's Best Ghost Towns – A Practical Guide (Albuquerque, N. Mex., 1981), 119-122.
Daily Bulletin of the Orders Affecting the Postal Service, United States Post Office Department, Washington, DC, March 10, 1914.
Newpaper Articles, sourced through https://www.newspapers.com/:
Albuquerque Journal, from December 28, 1904 to July 13, 1913.
Albuquerque Morning Journal, December 16, 1913.
Albuquerque Tribune, September 12, 1963.
Black Range (Robinson, N. Mex.), January 19, 1883.
Carlsbad (N. Mex.) Current Argus, January 16, 1914.
Deming (N. Mex.) Headlight, December 31, 1904 to January 16, 1914.
Las Vegas (N. Mex.) Daily Optic, December 20, 1904.
Las Vegas (N. Mex.) Free Press, April 29, 1892.
Santa Fe Daily New Mexican, June 25, 1882 to October 25, 1887.
Silver City (N. Mex.) Daily Press, December 13, 1966 to October 22, 1972.
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