Lowell, a town where time stood still.

Lowell sits to the south east of Bisbee, Arizona and was a thriving mining town in the late 1800’s and into the 1950’s. Many of the surrounding towns, including Bisbee and Warren sprung up and thrived because of copper mining. It seems like the whole state of Arizona is placed on top of massive deposits of gold and copper ore.

We stumbled upon Lowell while visiting Bisbee in October of 2018. A random turn found us driving down Eire Street through what is left of the main downtown area. We immediately felt as though the apocalypse had occurred in the mid 1950’s. Everything from the cars on the streets to the 20 plus store fronts scream 50’s from the Greyhound bus to the rusting cars that line the thoroughfare. The mechanic’s shop and gas station to the movie theater and Harley Davidson store. It really is as though time is standing still in Lowell. There is still a café that will serve breakfast and lunch called The Bisbee Breakfast Club, and a super creepy antiques store. This little slice of Arizona history is certainly worth seeing if you are in the south eastern part of the state.

I really appreciated the mural painted on the side of one of the buildings that reads, “Welcome to Lowell” next to a flying saucer. That was me hooked. Love me anything alien.

Like I stated before, this was a mining town. The Lavender Pit Mine was the big local mine for Lowell, and it was probably its downfall as well. As the mine grew, parts of the town had to be evacuated in order to extend the pit. This consumed much of the residential properties in the immediate area and eventually nearly consumed the town all together.

There really is something eerily special about Lowell and the way that it has been preserved all these years. The preservation of this little stretch of town is not by chance. The Lowell Americana Project is run by a team of locals that are passionate about restoration of the buildings and the automobiles that line the streets. They really have done a fantastic job and I hope that their labor of love keeps this easily missed piece of history around for many years to come.