Abandoned Arizona II: Mining and Memories

Arizona's geologic riches share more than 1,000 years of history with the state's agricultural development. Hundreds of years before the Spanish arrived, Native Americans mined and farmed Arizona's bountiful terrain. Today, modern mining ruins and abandoned farms populate diverse regions of the state and offer the curious explorer much insight into centuries-old mining techniques and farming practices. What remains illuminates the past and chronicles our oftentimes lightning-speed submission to newer technologies and our desertion of land now devoid of its spoils. Abandoned Arizona: Mining and Memories delves, photographically, into several of Arizona's scarcely settled mining and farming areas. Wandering through Southern Pinal County's forgotten farms is reminiscent of a visit to a Smithsonian exhibition of antique agricultural machinery and superseded industrial processing methods. Mines, too, leave their mark, and not just in the land they scar--their crumbling remains are testimony to the grit and determination of the West's early settlers. Many of these once bustling agricultural and industrial sites will one day be erased and succumb to our voracious hunger for urban sprawl. The images in Mining and Memories will remain as testimony to Arizona's proud history as a land of exceptional beauty and natural bounty.