Bisbee on a Sunday

Sunday

We got a great night’s sleep at the Eldorado Suites. The mattress is great and the pillows are great. So often the pillows in a hotel or other accommodation are just awful. Kudos to the Eldorado! And we awoke Sunday to another brilliant clear day. The original plan was to visit Kartchner Caverns in the afternoon, but it’s an hour drive each way, so we decided just to do Bisbee again. We’ll do the caverns another time.

So we did a walkabout again and got more Bisbee quirky pictures. First we did an alley just across the street from the hotel. It’s the definition of eclectic and quirky.

Click on the galleries to bring up full sized pictures – the gallery often has just thumbnails.

Then we headed up Main Street again with a certain destination in mind. First some pictures from the walk.

Our destination was the High Desert Market and Café where we had lunch yesterday. This place is a real hidden gem. You can sit inside or outside. You order at the counter and they deliver the food to your table. You also grab deserts and drinks and take them with you to your table. After you are done eating, you report to the cashier and tell her everything you had and pay up. I’ve never seen a place run like that before. And the food is delicious. For breakfast Elaine had a Breakfast Burrito (scrambled eggs, potatoes, mild green chiles, onion, and bacon). I had the Strata (Italian savory bread pudding with Italian sausage, peppers, cream, eggs, and cheese with a side of fresh fruit that included bananas, orange, apple, melon, and grapes). And we had to split another homemade lemon tart that is simply to die for. The café is across the street from Screaming Banshee Wood Fired Pizza (which we’ll have to try next visit), the Catholic church, and the Cochise County Superior Court building.

The Cafe and Market

Our Food

Across the Street

After eating we headed home to rest and check in on the Patriots (boo!).

Dinner tonight will require using the car. It will be the first time it has moved since we arrived. Fiona (our GPS girl) will get us the our restaurant, the Copper Pig. Great menu – you gotta love a restaurant that serves Pig Chowder! I didn’t have it. It only opened a few months ago, and in keeping with Bisbee quirkiness, it’s only open Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from 5 PM to 8 PM. They don’t have a liquor license yet, so we brought our own wine.

I had a grilled shrimp cocktail (a special) to start followed by the Copper Pig Trio (BBQ brushed pork ribs, garlic sausage, baby schnitzel & white mushroom sauce). Elaine had Arancini (Crisp risotto, mozzarella, with plum tomato sauce) to start followed by a house specialty, Jagerschnitzel (Lightly breaded pork loin cutlet with a mushroom cabernet sauce). We shared a blueberry sundae for dessert. (Only had phone camera for pics – it’s not good in low light.)

The camera battery lasted. Yay. Monday morning we check out and head home. We should be home by 2 PM. Thanks for stopping by and viewing our weekend getaway.

Bonus History Lesson

Feel free to skip. The Copper Pig is in the Warren section of Bisbee. Warren is famous for the Warren Ball Park which we drove right by on the way to the restaurant.. More info on Wikipedia. Supposedly it was the first ever ball park built to handle both baseball and football. It was built by the Calumet and Arizona Mining Company (which later merged with Phelps Dodge) for the use of miners and their families. The Warren Ballpark is one of the oldest professional baseball stadiums in the United States. It has hosted baseball Hall of Famers John McGraw, Connie Mack and Honus Wagner and also some of the members of the Chicago White Sox involved in the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, such as Hal Chase, Chick Gandil and Buck Weaver. The ballpark was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 2010 as part of the Bisbee Residential Historic District.

It is, however, probably most famous as a short-term detention in the infamous Bisbee Deportation in 1917. Phelps Dodge orchestrated the illegal round-up and arrest of striking miners (who were of many nationalities). They were detained at Warren Ballpark, loaded onto railcars, and transported to Columbus, New Mexico. They were warned never to return to Bisbee.

A presidential mediation commission investigated the actions in November 1917, and in its final report, described the deportation as “wholly illegal and without authority in law, either State or Federal.” Nevertheless, no individual, company, or agency was ever convicted in connection with the deportations. Arizona and Cochise County never prosecuted the case, and in United States v. Wheeler (1920), the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution by itself does not give the federal government the power to stop kidnappings, even ones involving moving abductees across state lines on federally-regulated railroads.

End of history lesson.