These days it is closed to the public, but in its day the ghost town of Christmas, Arizona - about 10 miles north of Winkelman – boasted a population of about 1,000.
Christmas, like a number of Arizona towns, was built around copper mining. Between 1905 and 1943 the Christmas Mine produced 55 million pounds of copper, worth over $10 million. The town that sprang up around it had a dairy, a grocery store, a school, a church, a cemetery, a hat shop, a barbershop . . . and, for about 20 years, a post office.
From June 17, 1905 to March 30, 1935, the date it finally closed – it was shut down several times before – the Christmas post office took in Christmas cards and other packages from across the country by people who wanted their items re-mailed with a Christmas postmark. Despite the final closure, holiday mail came in for the next 20 years and was forwarded to the Winkelman post office.
As for the town cemetery, the website findagrave.com lists 57 memorials there but that may not be all (watch future editions of the Arizona Silver Belt for more on the cemetery and the Christmas Mine’s history). One thing the town did not have was gambling halls, saloons or brothels.
The Christmas Mine is also notable as the place three minerals – apachite, junitoite and ruizite – were first found.
The first mining claims were filed in 1878 by William Tweed and Dennis O’Brien. In 1882 Dr. James Douglas, acting as an agent for Phelps Dodge, bought Tweed’s claims and acquired an option on O’Brien’s holdings. Phelps Dodge formed the San Carlos Mining Company to explore and develop the area; a 70-mile wagon road was built from the Picacho railhead. Operations halted in 1882 when it was determined the site was on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, but on Dec. 22, 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt signed an executive order changing the reservation boundaries.
The mine, and the town, would get its name some three days later. A prospector named George Chittenden, founder of the Saddle Mountain Mining Company, and his partner N.H. Mellor staked their claim in the early hours of Dec. 25, 1902. They had kept an eye on the site and so had Phelps Dodge, who had hired a watchman – who, it is said, went to Globe to celebrate the holiday. “We filled our stockings and named the place Christmas in honor of the day,” Chittenden would say later.
After settling a lawsuit by Phelps Dodge, Saddle Mountain Mining Company worked the site until 1907. In that time the mine produced about 4.5 million pounds of copper.
Later owners of the Christmas Mine included the Gila Copper Sulphide Company, Miner Products Company and Inspiration Consolidated Copper Company. A slump in copper prices forced the mine’s final closure in the early 1980s. Today Freeport McMoRan owns the property where the mine and the town stood.
