Douglas: Where the Copper Smelter Ran the Border

Douglas, Arizona, was founded in nineteen oh one as a smelter town, and the Calumet and Arizona Mining Company built a smelter here in nineteen oh two to process copper ore from the Bisbee mines about twenty-six road miles to the west. The town was platted on a flat desert bench just north of the Mexican border and named for James Douglas, the Canadian-born mining engineer who ran the Phelps Dodge empire. Within years, Douglas had grown into a substantial smelter city with a binational character, twinned across the border with the Mexican city of Agua Prieta.

The Gadsden Hotel, opened in nineteen oh seven and rebuilt in nineteen twenty-nine after a fire, anchors the Sonoran Historic District with its white marble staircase and Tiffany-style stained-glass ceiling. Douglas's smelter closed in nineteen eighty-seven, but the historic downtown and its position on the international border remain the town's defining features.