Around Miami

By Santos C. Vega PhD, Marlene Tiede and Delvan Hayward

During the late 1800s, prospectors in search of gold, silver, and copper began to settle around the Pinal Mountains area in Miami. By 1918, several mining companies had established roots and contributed to the town’s booming growth. The community established housing, schools, a hospital, and a town government, and the population grew to 5,000. Soon, Miami achieved recognition as one of the main mining towns in the state, along with neighboring Globe, Jerome, Morenci, Superior, Ajo, and Ray-Sonora. The new mining opportunities brought immigrants from around the world to settle in the area and eventually turned Arizona into a leading contributor to the copper industry. Although mining’s hold on the local economy has changed over the years, today at least 20 percent of Miami-area employment is centered around copper mining, which remains close to the heart of the first hardy miners’ descendants.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Sep 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781439649794

Santos C. Vega PhD

Santos C. Vega, PhD, is a native of Miami and graduated from Miami High School before serving with the US Air Force during the Korean War. Currently, he is professor emeritus of the Hispanic Research Center at Arizona State University. Vega’s publications include numerous articles, the novel The Worm in My Tomato, and the Arcadia Publishing title Mexicans in Tempe.

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INTRODUCTION

Approximately 90 miles east of Phoenix and about 100 miles north of Tucson is the copper-mining community of Miami (pronounced, My-yam-uh, by the more settled of residents there), founded by Cleve W. Van Dyke in 1908. It is a historic and rugged town with its own particular vocabulary: headframe, tank house, smelter, concentrator, rod plant, and slag dump. Its natural beauty lies in its vegetation—oaks, mesquite, and the palo verde—and in the terrain of the Pinal Mountains that envelope the town. A 4,000-foot elevation invites a winter that sees snow in the majesty of the mountains and a spring season that highlights the beauty of its terrain. And neighborhoods and unincorporated areas nearby have legendary names: Turkey Shoot, Red Springs Canyon, Buena Vista Terrace, Inspiration Addition, Davis Canyon, Wheatfields, Little Hollywood, Mexican Canyon, Claypool, Central Heights, Midland City, Live Oak Street, and Live Oak Canyon. To some, and perhaps to the tourist passing through on West Live Oak Street, this copper town may not seem to be one of beauty at all. Its steep hills are dotted with houses sitting precariously on uneven terrain. Old and abandoned mine structures remain visible from within the town’s main street. And a four-foot, reinforced concrete retaining wall built in 1915 to contain floodwaters from the Miami Wash runs smack through the middle of the town.

Anyone can see that the history of Miami is linked to the production of copper; that is still true today. The Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. mining operations remain visible from US Highway 60/70, which brings travelers from the west to Miami. Freeport will begin the development of Miami’s first sewage treatment plant, a venture that will bring filtered and purified water to irrigate the community’s local golf course. It’s a win-win situation for both town and tourists. Cleve Van Dyke’s brother-in-law told me that the best thing about living in Miami was that it was perfect for both the rich and the poor. For the rich, the cost of living in Miami was good, and it had many restaurants serving savory and fresh Mexican food to suit any taste. For the poor, the cost of living in Miami was good, and no one would ever go broke there. Cleve W. Van Dyke envisioned opportunities for investments and economic development and had them in mind when he founded Miami Flats, as the town was originally known. He bought the town from other investors for $25,000, homesteaded all its land, and established his own real estate firm, the Miami Trust Company, to manage and control his properties. Major shareholders, managers, and investors in his company included his siblings, his wife and her siblings, his son-in-law and his family, and his close friends who advised him in legal and business matters. Van Dyke laid out the town, plotted it, and graded its streets. He owned the town’s public utilities and waterworks, published its newspaper, and named the telephone company after his wife, Ida. The Van Dyke Copper Company mineshaft was built on a hill overlooking the town. Van Dyke’s majestic, white two-story mansion and abundant surrounding citrus groves and apple orchards lay below the mine. Many residents today recall stealing apples, oranges, and peaches from Van Dyke’s orchards and running away with their prizes to avoid being caught by his gardener and night watchman, a muscular Swede who spoke little English. Today, the Van Dyke presence remains in the town through an attorney who represents the Van Dyke grandchildren and the 200 parcels the family owns within and adjacent to the town limits.

Soon, more substantial and larger copper companies were established on surrounding hills. A smelter and additional mining structures loomed above the town like monoliths on its mountainsides. The town and its merchants and business owners served the copper industry and mining companies, including the Miami Copper Company, the Inspiration Consolidated Copper Company, the Iron Cap Mine, and the International Smelter and Refining Company. Miami needed workers to mine its copper, and the community soon became an immigrant town—a workers’ town—and its population reflected its racial and ethnic composition. In the decade from 1910 to 1920, the town’s population rose to almost 10,500 people, an increase from the estimated 1,800 recorded in the 1910 census. Immigrants came from Mexico, the Balkans, Eastern and Northern Europe, China, England, Italy, and Spain. African Americans joined the westward trek too, with many families traveling to Miami from Texas and Oklahoma—all coming to work and live and forge out their American Dream of education and success. They sent their children to the elementary schools in their neighborhoods: Central School, Black Warrior, Bullion Plaza, Thomas Jefferson, Live Oak, Inspiration Addition, Oak Street, Buena Vista, George Washington, and the Benjamin Franklin School on Inspiration Hill (where the mining engineers, prominent and wealthy mining officials, and mining administrators lived). The Miami High School and its faculty and coaches served them all well. All-round athletes in all sports earned athletic scholarships to prestigious universities, and talented students earned educational scholarships that led to academic, law, and business degrees. Students also came away with skills that gained them important and national prestige as labor and political leaders, attorneys, educators, entrepreneurs, physicians, scientists, and university professors: Romana Acosta Bañuelos was selected by Pres. Richard Nixon to serve as the treasurer to the United States in 1971, a post she held until 1974; Estéban Edward Torres was appointed US ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in Paris, France, from 1977 to 1979, and served as special assistant to Pres. Jimmy Carter from 1979 to 1981; Orville Larson became the vice