If I remember right.. This is the old VT&S (Verde Tunnel & Smelter) station. Though the only passenger traffic was by a small railbus that did not last very long due to constant break downs on the 4% grade up from Clarkdale. I highly doubt many passengers road anyway, and there was no mail contract. As William mentioned, there is still rail embedded in the road on the way to the Gold King Mine, if you look to your right as you cross over it you can see the old grade as it heads down to Hopewell and Clarkdale. The big yellow spot on the hillside visible from the Douglas Mansion is the last major fill needed for the rails to reach the open pit. The older smelter and underground mine used to sit on the hillside here until it was discovered that the main body of copper ore was directly under the smelter. What do you do in that situation? Well... move the whole smelter of course. The new smelter was built in what would become Clarkdale. This all began around 1912, and by 1919 the VT&S standard gauge railroad was completed to Jerome. The hillside was slowly chipped and blasted away over the years. The narrow gauge UV&P railroad moved its station off to the side of the new open pit area, its third new Jerome station. However once the standard gauge connection was made by the VT&S to Clarkdale where the Verde Valley Railroads tracks then connected to the Santa Fe's Peavine at Drake, the narrow gauge lost almost all of its revenue, and made its last run in 1920.
The smelter and VT&S ran until 1953, when everything was shut down.
That's just the part of Mr. Clark's mining and railroading history in this area. Mr. Douglas had his own Smelter and railroads in the town of Clemenceau. (later swallowed up by Cottonwood) But that's a whole nother story...
Matt, the other buildings in your photos are whats left of Phelps Dodge's mining and office buildings for the mine. Behind all this is still a very large hole from the open pit operations. (Some of it was covered up, but not all) Wouldn't want to be walking around there after dark without a flashlight...
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/21/2009 02:59PM by Jon Waldon.
