2/20 Village of Ajo on the Way to Organ Pipe National Park, AZ

Organ Pipe Cactus National Park, which I will write about in a separate post, is about 6 miles from the Mexican border, but it is 127 miles southwest of Phoenix and 172 miles east of Yuma.  Basically, it is about 140 miles from a Walmart Supercenter or other large grocery or big box store.  If you have not stocked up and need groceries, gas, propane, hardware, or a restaurant, your only solution is the small town of Ajo (pronounced Ah-hoe), which is about 34 miles north of the Organ Pipe Cactus National Park campground.  

It has a couple of grocery stores, a hardware store, gas stations that sell propane, a few restaurants, and places that provide most of the other things you might need.  It also has an interesting historic town center, a very large now-closed open-pit copper mine, a small museum and a population of about 3,000 people.  It also has an interesting town center built in Spanish revival architecture. 

The first thing you notice as you drive into or through Ajo are the huge piles of rock along the highway.   This dark rock is the over-burden that was removed from the huge pit mine just southwest of town.  There had been a small mine in Spanish times, but in 1911, the mine was purchased and expanded, causing Ajo to boom.  The mine employed more than 1,000 employees and was in operation from 1916 to 1985, which a strike caused the owners to close it.  (More about the mine in another post.)

The mine owners also constructed a processing plant to concentrate the ore, and this white rock, I was told, was the leftovers from that processing. 

You can't miss the town square because the highway goes right past it.  The buildings on the outside of the square contains a post office, visitor center, and several shops and restaurants. 

 

This part of the town square contains the visitor center. 

A view of the square and some of the shops.  I noticed that there was a market of some sort on Saturday, but they were closing down by the time I got there for my museum visit.

View of the arcade of small, retail shops. 

Directly across from the town square is the Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception, completed in 1927 and still in operation.

Also opposite the park, but father down the street, is the Curley School, which served the town until the mine closed in 1985.  It has currently been transformed into 30 apartments and work spaces for artisans at reasonable rents.   

Now, on to more about the mine and the local museum!!