Monday, January 07, 2019

The Southwestern Sojourn - Day 43: Miami

Jan 07

Miami, Arizona that is.  More on this name in a bit.

After two days of overcast skies, I woke to a clear sky!

Having spent my teenage years in Miami, FL....I tend to notice when other locales are named the same, such as the one in Ohio.

Today I rode Scarlett over to US Highway 60 and headed east towards the town of Miami, passing Superior along the way and turning around eventually at Globe, AZ.
Copper Boomtown Miami

 Catholic Shrine by the Miami welcome sign

How the town got its name

I found the towns of Miami, Claypool and Globe to be typical roadside towns, with their glories in the past and their present in a somewhat decaying condition.

The Bullion Plaza, in Miami, is where I found this neat display of an old dump truck sitting in the bed of a much larger and more modern dump truck used in the mines around the area.


 The large cargo area reminds me of the giant dump
trucks used in Colorado for gold mining in Cripple Creek

I saw several strip mining operations but only found one where I could find a spot for a picture of the operation; the rest were behind fencing and guards.

 Carlota Mine

On the way to Miami, I must have blinked and missed passing through the Top Of the World settlement.   More on this place here:  LINK   Basically had its start as a US Army project to establish a mule trail between planned Army posts.

Not much remains of the site today, I only managed to catch it on the return trip because the rock formation below caught my eye and I stopped to take a look.  Turns out that's part of the site.


 Top of the World Trading Post.
Closed today.

 Views of Devil's Canyon




Close to Superior, AZ...is Picket Post Mountain.  I rode to the trailhead at the based of the mountain but it was full of cars and so I skipped the hike that was offered there.


 Picket Post Mountain from US60

Got back to camp and relaxed until sunset.  No clouds, clear skies which resulted in a warm day (mid to high 50s) but not much of a sunset.


 Views of the distant mountain peaks to the west


I think I'll stay one more day and explore Cottonwood Canyon itself tomorrow.  Today's sunshine did much to dry out the dirt road that leads to the canyon so the going should be good.  Hopefully.

4 comments:

Bluekat said...

No clouds may make for meh sunsets, but it's sure nice to see the blue skies sometimes.
So do they pronounce it "Mima"?

redlegsrides said...

Good question! I didn’t ask though....

RichardM said...

Was the open pit mine for Cu or something else. I remember visiting a huge open pit Cu mine west of Tucson back in the late 70s. It was pretty impressive. We got a nice tour of the mine due to the researchers we were working with were from the parent company.

redlegsrides said...

Yep, Cu, RichardM....I think the whole area is copper mining oriented