Out on Copper Hills Road in Globe, just before the pavement gives way to dirt, stands a tiny museum that holds relics of a mining town. A short walk uphill from the building are the ruins of Copper Hill’s former school, which was also used as a town hall.

The man who built that museum, Michael Smith, said small deposits of silver led to nearby copper mining in the early 20th century – including such operations as the Iron Cap Mine. “Whenever there’s silver, it comes hand in hand with copper,” Smith said.

Smith said more than 500 people lived in the town of Copper Hill in the 1920s, adding that the place once had “everything a little town needed.” Along with the school, there was a small hospital, a post office/store, a payroll office, a town baseball team and a pool hall – but no saloons. For that, he said, the miners would simply walk to downtown Globe.

Smith, an Arizona native – “I was born down in Eloy, which was a small junction town back in 1960,” he said – welcomes visitors from all over to his museum. “I’ve had people travel from out of state; they come up to visit Globe, take to traveling back roads, stop by and say ‘Can we take a look at this stuff?’ I said, ‘That’s my hobby. Come on in, take a look and see.’

“They’re kind of in awe that there was a full-blown town at one time, because you don’t see much up here.”

The yard leading to Smith’s museum is where larger relics are kept, including a rebuilt 1922 Fairbanks Morse kerosene engine he sometimes fires up for visitors. “I’m not exactly running it today, because of the heat,” he said.

Used in a New Mexico silver mine until around 1930, the engine was in pieces in a Yuma, Arizona machine shop when Smith brought it back to Copper Hill. “I put it back together – it took about two years – but it does run and it’s got a unique sound. A lot of folks like to come up to see this thing run. I think they like to see me start it more than anything.”

Smith said about 90% of the museum’s relics were from Copper Hill, whose ore was milled in a complex father down Copper Hills Road, then taken to the Old Dominion Mine in Globe for smelting. It was for the “delicate stuff” that he built the structure. Among the relics inside are a 1920s store token from the Copper Hill post office/store that Smith found while metal-detecting.

“By 1930 the ore body was depleting, so they attempted smaller shafts,” Smith said. “Some of those are still up on the hill,” he added, pointing out a rise south of the museum.

“After 1930 there were less than 40 people living here, because there was no business or means to support a living,” he said, adding that when the Great Depression hit supplies, machinery and workers were moved to the Old Dominion Mine. “They shut down the water, electricity, phone lines and everything to this community. They recycled a lot of the wood structures. In the mid-1940s, during World War II, any leftover machinery, heavy metals and such were removed for the war effort.”

Smith said he has always been interested in ghost town hunting, history and travel. “I knew about Copper Hill but didn’t know the details. Once I got up here, it was a fascination of mine to dig into the history and see what was left of it, and why and how it came and disappeared so fast.”