Christmas

Overview

A town named for the day it was claimed

Christmas sits at the southern tip of the Dripping Springs Mountains in the southernmost corner of Gila County, about 1.7 miles west of the Gila River and roughly 10 miles north of Winkelman. Copper outcrops in the canyon drew prospectors around 1880, and Phelps, Dodge and Company bought claims and built a small smelter. In 1884 a government survey found the ground lay inside the San Carlos Apache Reservation, and the work stopped.

On December 22, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt signed an order that took the area out of the reservation. Relay riders brought the news to George Chittenden of the Saddle Mountain Mining Company late on Christmas Eve, and before dawn he and N. H. Mellor staked claims on the old ground. They named the place for the day.

The mine ran in bursts for the next 80 years, following the price of copper. The company town grew to about 1,000 people around 1930, with a school, a church, stores, a dairy and a barbershop and, by most accounts, no saloons. Its post office became known across the country for remailing holiday cards with a Christmas postmark. The Depression emptied most of the town. Inspiration Consolidated Copper bought the mine in 1955 and turned it into an open pit in 1966, moving or bulldozing buildings as the pit grew. Mining stopped in January 1982. Freeport-McMoRan now owns the property, and it's closed to the public.

Timeline

Eighty years of a boom-and-bust mine

1. c. 1880Dennis O'Brien and William Tweed stake the first copper claims. Some sources date them to 1878.
2. 1882Dr. James Douglas buys claims for Phelps, Dodge and Company. Its San Carlos Copper Company builds a wagon road from the railhead at Picacho and two small furnaces.
3. 1884A government survey finds the mine inside the San Carlos Apache Reservation. Work stops.
4. Dec 22, 1902President Theodore Roosevelt signs an executive order removing the area from the reservation.
5. Dec 25, 1902George Chittenden and N. H. Mellor of the Saddle Mountain Mining Company stake claims before dawn and name the place Christmas.
6. Jun 17, 1905The post office opens. Over the next 30 years it closes and reopens several times.
7. 1905–1907A new smelter is fired up in August 1905. The Panic of 1907 shuts the operation in August 1907.
8. Jun 1911The Arizona Eastern Railroad finishes a 7.6-mile branch from Winkelman to the mouth of Copper Canyon.
9. 1916ASARCO restarts production. An aerial tram carries ore 7,300 feet down to the railroad on the Gila River.
10. 1921A post-war crash in copper prices closes the mine.
11. c. 1930The town peaks at about 1,000 people.
12. 1932The Depression stops mining. The population falls to about 100.
13. Mar 30, 1935The post office closes for good. Holiday mail keeps arriving for about 20 more years.
14. 1955Inspiration Consolidated Copper buys the property.
15. 1960The census counts 180 residents.
16. Oct 1966The open pit becomes the only source of ore. Town buildings are moved or bulldozed as the pit grows.
17. Jan 2, 1982Inspiration halts all operations and lays off about 250 workers.
18. 2007Freeport-McMoRan acquires the property with Phelps Dodge. It drills deep exploration holes from 2009 to 2012.
19. Sep 2024Copper Country News reports the site closed to the public on Freeport's land.

Record and story

Claim jumping on Christmas morning

The record. The executive order restoring the ground to the public domain was signed on December 22, 1902. Saddle Mountain's managers in Washington telegraphed their representatives in Casa Grande, and a relay of horsemen carried the message to Chittenden late on Christmas Eve. Accounts differ on where he was waiting: the Arizona Geological Survey history says his mine office at Dudleyville, Wikipedia a camp just outside the reservation. Phelps Dodge sued over the claims, then settled before trial. Saddle Mountain bought about 40 of the contested claims for $160,000.

The story. Phelps Dodge had kept a watchman on the property for years so it could refile its claims the moment the land opened. As the tale is usually told, he had gone to Globe to celebrate the holiday when Chittenden's party arrived. The best-known line, "we filled our stockings and named the place Christmas in honor of the day," is credited to Chittenden in most accounts and to Mellor in another, which also has him admitting that they jumped the earlier claims.

Phelps Dodge got the property back almost a century later, when it merged with Cyprus Amax in 1999.

The postmark. The post office opened in 1905 and closed and reopened with the mine's fortunes. Postmasters were paid mostly from stamp sales, so the job was hard to fill, except in December, when cards arrived from all over the country to be remailed with a Christmas postmark. After the office closed for good in 1935, holiday mail kept coming for about two decades and was forwarded to Winkelman.

No saloons. Christmas is often described as a town without gambling halls, brothels or saloons. The claim comes from secondary accounts, and we haven't found a contemporary record either way.

What's left

A company town at the edge of the pit

The camp stood about 2,000 feet northeast of the No. 3 Shaft. By about 1919 it had company offices and shops, a post office, a school, a company store, a clubhouse, a billiard hall and frame houses for several hundred people. Early miners lived in tent tops, canvas-roofed cabins with wooden sides, and many were replaced by frame houses by World War I. The company owned the houses and rented them out. Housing for managers and engineers was kept apart from the miners, most of whom were of Mexican heritage. In 1953 and 1954 a later operator built 13 new houses and remodeled 25 others.

When the open pit took over in the 1960s, some of the town was moved or bulldozed. A photo on the back cover of the 2021 Arizona Geological Survey history, taken around 2014, still shows the townsite with the pit behind it. We don't know which buildings stand today, and the site is closed, so there's no legal way to look. According to Copper Country News, a memorial website lists 57 burials in the town cemetery and may not have them all.

The historic maps below show the change. On the 1915 sheet, Christmas is a tight cluster of buildings with a road winding down Copper Canyon to the Arizona Eastern line on the Gila River. The 1968 sheet shows streets of houses along the canyon road, with the mine and its tailings just southwest. By 1986 a large pale patch marks the pit, with mine dumps to the north.

• Townsite remnants beside the pit (status unknown)
• Christmas open pit (1966–1981)
• Mine dumps and tailings
• Town cemetery

Christmas today

An idle mine with copper still in the ground

Christmas has passed through many owners since 1982. Cyprus Minerals bought it with the Inspiration assets in 1988, and Phelps Dodge took it over through its 1999 merger with Cyprus Amax. Freeport-McMoRan acquired it with Phelps Dodge in March 2007 and still holds it. From 2009 to 2012 Freeport ran a geophysical survey and drilled eight deep holes, 2,500 to 4,400 feet. As of the end of 2020, the company reported a mineral resource of about 332 million short tons at 0.40% copper.

The mine is also known to mineral collectors. Three minerals, apachite, junitoite and ruizite, were first described from here.

There's nothing open to visit. If you're driving AZ 77 between Winkelman and Globe, the closest you can come is the highway along the Gila River below the mine.

Historic maps

Christmas on USGS maps, 1915–1986

Crops from the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection, centered on the townsite. Each sheet shows what surveyors mapped that year; compare them with today's topo and aerial on this page.

19151:62,50019541:250,00019681:24,00019861:100,000

Map & directions

Getting there

Winkelman is the closest town, and AZ 77 runs north from it along the Gila River below the mine. The site is closed, so treat these routes as directions to the highway. The last 3 miles drawn on the map follow private mine roads that you can't use.

Base map: USGS The National Map (public domain). Routes: OSRM on © OpenStreetMap contributors data (ODbL), computed October 2026. Times assume dry roads.

Photos

Around Christmas

The old Gila River bridge at Winkelman, the closest townKinoite and apophyllite from the Christmas Mine

Visitor reports

Been to Christmas?

Been there lately? Tell the next visitor what you found: whether you could get in, the state of the road and what's still standing. Photos are welcome. We read every report before it appears here.

Thanks. Your report reached us, and we'll read it before it goes on the page.

Copper mining

More copper mining ghost towns

The nearest in Arizona.

Guide

Troy

33.14, -110.90

Pinal County, Arizona

A copper camp from about 1900, high in the Dripping Spring Mountains, with a smelter that ran only in fits. The post office closed in 1910. Later…

Ruins · 2016 visitCopper mining

Guide

Sonora

33.17, -111.00

Pinal County, Arizona

A Spanish-speaking mining town of 3,000 to 6,000 people beside the Ray copper mine, torn down in the mid-1960s so the open pit could grow. Nothing is…

Gone · inside Ray MineCopper mining

All 30 copper mining ghost towns →

Nearby

Other sites near Christmas

Straight-line distance from the townsite to other mapped sites in our Arizona index.

• Troy10.7 mi NW · Pinal
• Sonora16.3 mi NW · Pinal
• Ray17.0 mi NW · Pinal
• Rice20.9 mi NE · Gila
• Bellevue22.0 mi NW · Gila
• Aravaipa23.6 mi E · Graham
• Cochran23.8 mi W · Pinal
• Schultz24.7 mi S · Pinal

Sources

Sources and credits

1. ghosttowns.com, "Christmas": fact sheet fields (county, roads, legal description, climate, best time, post office dates).
2. Wikipedia, "Christmas, Arizona", retrieved October 2026: the 1902 claim, town amenities, population figures, the postmark, open-pit expansion, current ownership and closure, coordinates.
3. D. F. Briggs, "History of the Christmas Mine, Gila County, Arizona", Arizona Geological Survey Contributed Report CR-21-A (2021): early claims, the 1884 survey, the relay riders and watchman, the settlement, smelter, railroad spur, tram, the camp, peak and Depression population, open pit, 1982 shutdown, later owners, Freeport drilling and resource, production totals.
4. Copper Country News, "The mine named for Christmas" (September 18, 2024): closed to the public, Freeport ownership, the cemetery count, the minerals.
5. East Valley Tribune, "Ghost town named after Christmas": the gated mine road, the Mellor version of the quote, the 1920 population claim.
6. Elevation: USGS 3D Elevation Program point query. Routes: OSRM on OpenStreetMap data, October 2026.

Photo and map credits

• The old Gila River bridge at Winkelman, the closest town: Ammodramus, Wikimedia Commons, CC0
• Kinoite and apophyllite from the Christmas Mine: Didier Descouens, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
• The 1915 USGS Christmas sheet, with the camp above the Gila River: U.S. Geological Survey, USGS catalog, Public domain
• Topo map, area base map and aerial imagery: USGS The National Map (public domain).
• Historic maps: USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection (public domain): Christmas 1915, 1:62,500; Mesa 1954, 1:250,000; Christmas 1968, 1:24,000; Globe 1986, 1:100,000.