GARDENING IN A COPPER COUNTRY 
NORMAN CARMICHAEL 
Converting an Abandoned Arizona Mining Site into a Livable Garden where Roses and Palms, 
Oleanders, and Olive Trees Have Peacefully Supplanted the Cattle Rustler and His Kin 
M OLLOWING the lure of copper for a livelihood, my 
lot for seventeen years was cast in a mining camp in 
the extreme southeastern corner of Arizona. In the 
early ’seventies of last century, Clifton was a mere ham¬ 
let, “wild and woolly’’ 
as any Western mining 
camp could be, a happy 
hunting ground for In¬ 
dian raiders, cattle 
rustlers, claim jumpers, 
cut-throats, and gamb¬ 
lers, a weird enough 
setting for the enter¬ 
taining novel, “Miss 
Nobody in Nowhere,” 
written by Archibald 
Clavering Gunther in 
1881. With the advent 
of railroads, however, 
conditions began to 
change. The wily Ger- 
onimo and his band of 
marauding Apaches 
were soon run to earth; 
the cattle-thief and 
claim - jumper became 
undesirable citizens and 
were requested to 
“move on”; the rule of 
the “shooting iron” was 
broken, and under civ¬ 
ilizing influences Clifton 
gradually, if somewhat 
reluctantly, settled 
down into the more 
commonplace, if less 
picturesque, ways of a 
respectable, God¬ 
fearing community. 
With the exception of 
that occupied by the 
railroad and the cop¬ 
per works there was 
practically no level land 
for home sites for the 
workmen without going 
too far away since, for 
the greater part of its 
length through the 
town, the cliffs rose 
steeply from the river 
edge; in fact, the entire 
width between walls 
was riverbed, and where 
the narrow strip of land 
along the margin had 
been used for building 
purposes it was held by 
courtesy of the river 
only which, while usu¬ 
ally an innocent, inof¬ 
fensive enough stream 
of a dozen yards or so across and a foot or two deep, occasion¬ 
ally would rise in wrath and claim its own. On such occasions 
the water might lift fifteen or sixteen feet in a few hours and, 
overflowing the banks, run rampant through the town carrying 
before it everything 
movable, and not infre¬ 
quently lives were lost. 
Gradually, as the place 
grew larger, the people 
built higher and higher 
up the sides of the can¬ 
yon. I n those days any 
attempt at beautifying 
the home surroundings 
with gardens met with 
discouraging results, 
not alone from con¬ 
stantly threatening 
peril of floods, but still 
more persistently from 
the sulphurous fumes 
belched by the smelter 
intothe atmosphereand 
carried by the winds 
into every nook and 
corner of the neighbor¬ 
hood. Under such con¬ 
ditions gardening be¬ 
came a cruel joke, and 
when flowers were 
wanted to give the aes¬ 
thetic touch to somefes- 
tiveoccasion they had to 
be procured from Cali¬ 
fornia seven hundred 
miles away. 
Years passed, and the 
march of progress rend¬ 
ered the old plant ob¬ 
solete and called for the 
building of entirely new 
works on a much larger 
scale and a better site 
was found for these 
some distance off. Di¬ 
rectly across the river 
from the old site was a 
bay where the river at 
one time had its course, 
and which was kept 
washed out by oft-recur¬ 
ring floods; at all other 
times it was a bare gravel 
patch or crescent¬ 
shaped tract containing 
about five acres, sloping 
gently toward the river. 
Casting my eye upon 
this piece of waste land, 
I saw a vision and a 
solution of the garden 
problem. 
THREE VIEWS OF MR. CARMICHAELS ARIZONA GARDEN 
Once a bare gravel patch near an abandoned smelter and now transformed 
by the energy and vision of its owner, the author, into this refreshing place 
where Roses and Palms, Olives and Walnuts live in peaceful companionship 
and the feathery plumes of the Pampas-grass sway above a quiet lawn 
221 
