Copper Country Historic Tour
High School Class, Phoenix, Arizona
Two Days

Day 1:  Leave from the school and go to Karchner Caverns.  Experience a stunning limestone cave in Southeastern Arizona that boasts world-class features. This “live” cave, discovered in 1974, is host to a wide variety of unique minerals and formations. Water percolates from the surface and calcite formations continue to grow, including stalactites dripping down like icicles and giant stalagmites reaching up from the ground. Tour guides will unveil this fascinating underground landscape during a memorable 1½ hour tour.

From Karchner, travel to the Fort Huachuca museum re-creates the story of the U.S. Army in the Southwest, displaying uniforms of various periods, early equipment and weapons and model rooms, which present the daily life of the soldiers and their families. The nearby U.S. Army Intelligence Museum presents the evolution of intelligence activities in the U.S. Army.  Lunch in Sierra Vista.

After lunch we move on to Tombstone. That name means many things to many people. It creates images of gunfights and dusty streets, whiskey and Faro games, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and a plethora of old western movie scenes. But what many folks don't realize is that Tombstone, AZ is a real town with real inhabitants who have lived here throughout its history and still do today. That is part of the reason Tombstone has been called "The Town Too Tough to Die"

These are the very same streets here in Tombstone that Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, Johnny Ringo, Ike Clanton and a host of other Western Legends walked over 140 years ago. You can just feel the history here! This is the most authentic Western Town left in the United States!   Attend a reenactment of the historic Gunfight at the OK Corral.
 
Day 2:  Morning tour of Bisbee aboard the Bisbee Trolley Tour, where we re-trace the route of the historic Warren-Bisbee Railway of yesteryear and re-live the charm and wild west spirit of the nearby areas.  Then go for a tour of the Copper Queen Mine.  Put on your helmet and miner’s headlamp, board the mine train and descend into the depths of the mine created over 100 years ago where underground temperatures are 47 degrees all year long. The one and a quarter-hour tour leaves five times daily from the Queen Mine Tour Building. 

Following lunch, take a tour of the Mining Museum.  An affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, this small rural museum chronicles the history of the historic mining town of Bisbee through a rich display of artifacts, photographs and interesting displays.

Following the Museum, we head back to Phoenix.