Abandoned Towns
Silverbell around 1910: frame houses and tin-roofed shacks crowd a hillside below a cone-shaped hill, with a railroad trestle at left and mine buildings at right

Copper mining town · Silver mining town

Silverbell

A rough copper camp of about a thousand people that lived on hauled-in water and died with the mines in 1930. An open pit has since taken the townsite, and a cemetery in Ironwood Forest National Monument is what remains to visit.

32°25′50″N 111°32′18″W · 2,605 ft

Photo: Unknown, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

Mined away · 2012 visit

Current aerial imagery shows open-pit mine benches where the town stood, and BLM's land-status map shows the townsite as private land. Reports from 1998 and 2003 put it behind the mine's fence, and a visitor in 2012 found nothing standing. The Silverbell cemetery to the west is on public land in Ironwood Forest National Monument. We found no statement from the mine on access, so stay off mine property.

Overview

The town the mine ate

Tents, houses and the railroad trestle, about 1909
Tents, houses and the railroad trestle, about 1909 · Photo: Unknown, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
An Arizona Southern train between Red Rock and the mine, about 1909
An Arizona Southern train between Red Rock and the mine, about 1909 · Photo: Unknown, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

Silverbell stood on the southwest side of the Silver Bell Mountains, about 35 miles northwest of Tucson. Prospectors had worked small silver and copper mines here since the 1860s. In 1903 the Imperial Copper Company bought up the main claims, built a railroad to the Southern Pacific at Red Rock and laid out a company town on the site of an old camp. By 1905 it had about 1,000 people.

The town had a post office, a hotel, a school, saloons, two bakeries, a dairy, two firehouses and a theater. It had no good water. The ground water was too mineralized to drink, so water came in by wagon and later by rail and was sold from two taps, two hours each morning and evening. Ore went to the company smelter at Sasco, a dozen miles to the northeast.

Imperial's parent company went broke, Asarco took over, and World War I brought a last boom. After that the mines struggled, and when Asarco shut them in 1930 the town emptied within a year. In the 1950s Asarco came back with open pits and a new company town, Silver Bell, 4 miles to the southeast. Open-pit mining has since taken the old townsite. Its cemetery, on public land to the west, is what's left.

Timeline

From silver pockets to open pit

  1. Small pockets of rich silver ore at the Old Boot mine draw prospectors to the Silver Bell Mountains.
  2. Copper mining starts at the Old Boot, also called the Mammoth, and at the Young America, where a small blast furnace goes up in 1874.
  3. A mining camp grows on the site. Small companies and lessees, among them the English-based Silver Bell Mining and Smelting Co., work the mines on and off.
  4. The Imperial Copper Co. is formed and buys the main claims for $115,000 in cash and a $400,000 note.
  5. The Silverbell post office opens.
  6. The Arizona Southern Railroad, 20.6 miles of standard gauge, reaches the mines from Red Rock, climbing Jesuit Hill on three switchbacks. Ore shipments begin.
  7. The town has about 1,000 people.
  8. The company's smelter at Sasco is finished in February, and a concentrator opens at Silverbell in September.
  9. With the parent company's money sunk in its flooded Tombstone mines, all mining and smelting at Silver Bell stops. Only a grocery store and a saloon stay open.
  10. The Imperial Copper Co. declares bankruptcy.
  11. Asarco takes over, reopens the mines and the Sasco smelter, and the town rebounds to about 1,200.
  12. Copper prices fall after World War I, Asarco closes the Sasco smelter for good, and Spanish flu kills many residents.
  13. All production stops. A leasing company restarts one shaft in October 1922.
  14. After the stock market crash, Asarco suspends work. By 1931 fewer than 50 people are left, down from about 500 through the 1920s.
  15. Rail service ends and the line is pulled up.
  16. The post office closes, by one account.
  17. Asarco opens open-pit mines and builds a new company town, Silver Bell, about 4 miles to the southeast.
  18. Mining stops. The new town is demolished.
  19. Mining resumes as a leach-only operation, including a new pit about a mile north of the El Tiro pit.
  20. Ironwood Forest National Monument is created around the mine. The Silverbell cemetery is inside it.
  21. Open-pit benches and a pit lake fill the ground where the town stood.

Life in camp

"The Hell-hole of Arizona"

Silverbell had a reputation. A 1969 guide to Arizona ghost towns called it one of the most renowned mining camps in the Southwest and repeated its nickname, the Hell-hole of Arizona. The Arizona Daily Star's mining columnist calls it the toughest town in Pima County, with murders and lawlessness in its early years.

The stories that come down from those years are colorful and hard to check. Deputy Sam McEven is said to have pushed an ore car ahead of him as a shield to capture a fugitive, Ramon Castro, in an abandoned mine tunnel. The town doctor, Mead Clyne, reportedly kept a jar of the bullets he had dug out of patients. Treat both as local lore.

Even the name is a puzzle. Accounts credit a desert flower, a woman named Belle who rode a silver horse, a dance-hall girl with prematurely gray hair, or an English mining company.

Only the last has any paper behind it. The English-based Silver Bell Mining and Smelting Company did work the district in the 1890s, a decade before the town was laid out. None of the other stories has been confirmed.

Daily life ran on the company. Water sat in tanks beside the company store, the school had 75 students, and there was a hospital, a Wells Fargo office and an auto stage. The railroad's last four miles climbed Jesuit Hill on switchbacks, and steam trains hauled ore down to the smelter at Sasco.

1952–1984

Two towns called Silver Bell

The Silver Bell mine from the site of the 1950s town, 2014
The Silver Bell mine from the site of the 1950s town, 2014 · Photo: $1LENCE D00600D, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

The name has caused confusion ever since Asarco built a second town. When the company opened its open-pit mine in the early 1950s, it put a new community in a low pass between the Silver Bell and Waterman mountains, about 4 miles southeast of the old town. About 100 prefabricated houses were built on an assembly line in Tucson and trucked out in 1952, alongside two trailer courts, a store, a mess hall and a ball field. By 1970 about 1,000 people lived there, and the town had its own post office.

Low copper prices shut the mill in 1981, and mining stopped again on August 15, 1984. Asarco sold off or demolished the houses. Since a 1961 federal naming decision, maps call the 1950s town Silver Bell and the original Silverbell. Former residents of the second town formed the Silver Bell Historical Society in 2018. Mining resumed in 1996 as a leach operation, and it was still running when the Arizona Geological Survey published its history of the district in 2017.

What's left

Pits, a mine ruin and a cemetery

The Silverbell cemetery, 2014
The Silverbell cemetery, 2014 · Photo: $1LENCE D00600D, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
A ruined house at the BS&K Mine, 2014
A ruined house at the BS&K Mine, 2014 · Photo: $1LENCE D00600D, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Little of Silverbell survived the mines that followed it. The 1959 USGS sheet below marks "Silverbell (Site)" beside Jesuit Hill, with the new El Tiro pit just to the south and old shafts all around. By 1996 mine dumps cover the hills next to the site, and today's aerial imagery shows pit benches and a green pit lake. On the USGS sheets the "Silverbell (Site)" label sits a little southeast of our map pin, east of Jesuit Hill.

Just west of the townsite are the ruins of the BS&K Mine. BS&K Mining worked a small zinc mine in this area from 1947 to 1964, and Asarco bought the BS&K property in 1990. Photos from 2014 show a ruined bunkhouse, a house and an open adit. Farther west, the 1959 map marks the Silver Bell cemetery about 1.5 miles west-northwest of the town. It holds 131 recorded burials of townspeople and ranchers, and it's protected as part of Ironwood Forest National Monument, with a BLM cultural-resources sign. Maps show other cemeteries nearby, and not every visitor has found them all.

  • Silverbell cemetery (BLM)
  • BS&K Mine ruins (mine property)
  • Old railroad grade toward Red Rock and Sasco
  • Open pits and leach dumps where the town stood
USGS topographic map of the Silverbell site amid steep mine-cut contours north of Jesuit Hill
USGS The National Map, topo. Tight, terraced contours around the Silverbell label are the mine's pits and dumps.
Aerial view of open-pit mine benches, haul roads and a green pit lake
Aerial imagery, same area. Pit benches, haul roads and a green pit lake now fill the townsite.

Historic maps

Silverbell on USGS maps, 1934–1996

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.

USGS topographic map around Silverbell, 1934
Silver Bell sheet, 1934, 1:125,000 · U.S. Geological Survey, public domain · catalog record

Map & directions

Getting there

Marana is the closest town. The routes below were computed from OpenStreetMap and haven't been driven by us. They end on Silverbell Road, on BLM land in Ironwood Forest National Monument about 1.6 miles northwest of the townsite, because the townsite itself is inside the mine. About half the drive is on dirt, which is why the time is so long for the distance.

USGS topographic map between Marana and the Silver Bell Mountains with the routed approach drawn on it

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

From central Marana26.8 miabout 3 h 18 min
  1. From central Marana, take Moore Road west and Sanders Road north to Marana Road.2.1 mi
  2. Turn left on Marana Road, which becomes Trico–Marana Road.4.9 mi
  3. Turn right on Silverbell Road and head west past Ragged Top. It becomes Ragged Top Road.9.1 mi
  4. Turn right on the track OpenStreetMap calls Gasline.5.2 mi
  5. Turn left on Sasco Road, which becomes Silverbell Road, and follow it southwest. The route ends here, on monument land.5.5 mi
Google Maps directionsApple MapsOpenStreetMap

Road and safety notes

  • Silverbell Road is paved from Trico Road to past Red Hill and then turns to dirt that isn't regularly maintained. Friends of Ironwood Forest says conditions vary and sometimes call for high clearance.
  • The routed approach uses about 5 miles of a track OpenStreetMap calls Gasline. We don't know its condition. A 2018 account describes reaching the area by Avra Valley Road west to the mine, then Silverbell Road northwest around it.
  • Driving off existing roads is banned in Ironwood Forest National Monument.
  • The townsite and the BS&K Mine are on mine property. Stay out of fenced areas and away from the pits and old shafts.
  • Carry water, and avoid the summer heat.

Photos

Silverbell in photos

Visitor reports

Been to Silverbell?

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.

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Nearby

Other sites near Silverbell

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

Sources

Sources and credits

  1. ghosttowns.com, "Silverbell": fact sheet fields (roads, legal description, climate, best time, remains, post office date), the 1998 note on the mine fence.
  2. Wikipedia, "Silverbell, Arizona" and "Silver Bell, Arizona", retrieved October 2026: coordinates and elevation (GNIS), the 1961 naming decision, Sherman's 1969 description.
  3. Arizona Geological Survey, David F. Briggs, "History of the Silver Bell Mining District" (CR-17-A, 2017): mines, Imperial Copper, the railroad, town services and water, population figures, Asarco years, closures, production, the 1950s town, the BS&K Mine, the 1990s revival.
  4. Arizona Daily Star, William Ascarza, "Mine Tales: Silver Bell district yielded millions of pounds of copper" (March 2014): school, hospital, nickname, lawmen and doctor stories, name theories, cemeteries.
  5. Friends of Ironwood Forest, "Places of Interest" (from a 2020 newsletter): the cemetery's 131 burials and BLM protection, the Silver Bell Historical Society, Silverbell Road conditions.
  6. Gribblenation, "Silverbell Road and the Silverbell company town" (July 2018, recalling the author's 2012 trip): the town's place on the north end of the pits, 1934 post office closing, the road loop, nothing left standing.
  7. Arizona Daily Wildcat, "The open road: Visiting desert ghost towns" (2003): the townsite behind mine property, the cemetery, the higher population figure.
  8. azghosttowns.com, "Silverbell" (1996): section 33, private property, three cemeteries on the maps.
  9. Bureau of Land Management, "Ironwood Forest National Monument", as of October 2026: no permit needed, no developed facilities or first aid, nearest stores, vehicles on existing routes, high clearance on rugged roads, the loop back to I-10 on Sasco Road.
  10. Friends of Ironwood Forest, "Map and Directions" (March 2025 map), as of October 2026: the base of Ragged Top as the most popular area, the Sasco Road river crossing often closed, roads impassable in heavy rain, spotty cell coverage and scarce tow service.
  11. Land status: BLM Surface Management Agency map, October 2026. Elevation of the mined ground: USGS 3D Elevation Program point query. Routes: OSRM on OpenStreetMap data, October 2026. Not field-checked.

Photo and map credits