MRS. BELLE HEFLEY
919 16th St. Douglas, Arizona
Recorded by John Vick, Field Reporter

Mrs. Belle Hefley was born in California, in a construction camp—near the Arizona line. Probably somewhere around Parker, although she has no record of the exact locality. She was married in 1880, and shortly afterward went to Tombstone to live.

About 1885, she and her husband came to Bisbee which at that time was only a tent colony. There were no houses or “jacalitos”. The present post-office site was then the center of the colony and eventually a library was built there. Jim Burnet and Jim Carr hauled ore by wagon train to Fairbanks. The stables were located at what is now town of Don Luis.

Mr. Hefley, a native of Iowa, ran a hotel in Silver City, N.M. for a while. In Bisbee he ran a butcher shop with a man named Harrington. It was called the “Family Meat Market.”

The officer of the law was a Mr. Williams in the days when Mrs. Hefley first came to Bisbee. He was very clever and once fooled a notorious bandit by hiding the payroll in a tent back of the library. The payroll had been brought down from Tombstone on a Saturday, and on Sunday the bandit came into town. Williams met him, fed him a big chicken dinner, and told him there was no money in the town because there were no banks then. The bandit then left without bothering anyone.

When Dan Lewis and Dan Simons were officers, they would take a paternalistic interest in the cowboys who came to town on Saturdays. They had to check their six-shooters when they entered a bar, and the two officers would also take care of their money for them, doling them out only a small amount to be spent on drink.

Then—as now—every nationality except Chinese was represented in Bisbee.

Sometimes a hundred men could be seen scraping ore from the sides of the mountains around Bisbee and carrying it in gunny sacks on their shoulders to the buyer who took it by wagon train to the smelter.

Mr. Hefley at one time took care of some property on which gold mines were located by a Mr. Anguis (apparently the father of the present senator from Cochise Co.)

Thirty or forty years ago there were lots of streams and springs around Bisbee—wild cherries, grapes and bananas grew in abundance. There were many oak trees (bellotas) on the slopes of the mountains. In those days there were many bad floods due to cloudbursts. A flood-gate was constructed in Upper Tombstone Canyon for partial control of these sudden floods.

The first school in Bisbee had log benches. The teacher used to come from Tombstone for the five school days and return for the week-end.

Oxen were used in the early days for hauling, as well as burros.

Frank Dubacher started the first saloon in Brewery Gulch, about the same time, one was started on Chihuahua Hill.
In Brewery Gulch there was a place for “Free Coinage” where gold and silver could be minted.

Mrs. Hefley has some interesting pictures of Bisbee made between 1885-95. They show the first stores on Brewery Gulch and Main St. She has a picture of the free-coinage establishment, and another picture showing the Can Can Chop House. There are also pictures of the smelter at Upper Lowell, and of a train of burros carrying the water sacks. Mrs. Hefley would be willing to loan these pictures for reproduction.

Mrs. Hefly claims that when she first came to Bisbee, one man could make ten or fifteen dollars a day just carrying sacks of ore on his back to the wagon trains. There was a spirit of co-operation among the early miners, and if one of them fell ill, his fellows would help him get his ore to the smelter.