The Bisbee Deportation

Nearly 100 years ago, a quarter of Bisbee's population rounded up and deported another quarter of Bisbee's population. It was known contemporarily as "The Great Wobbly Drive" if you were sympathetic to the 'patriots' who rounded up their neighbors. It is now known as the Bisbee Deportation of 1917.

It started with a strike at the mines, where miners wanted safer practices in their inherently dangerous jobs, and a fair wage system in which the same work would warrant the same pay. It ended with almost 1200 Bisbee citizens being abandoned in Hermanez, New Mexico. What happened in between  - and why - is still debated.

For a critical analysis of the events, click over to my essay on the Deportation and its causes, here https://archersbones.wordpress.com/2016/04/26/bisbeedeportation/

Also, if you're in town, you can check out the Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum's exhibit on the Deportation. They're open 10-4 every day.

The University of Arizona has a great web exhibit, too. You can find it here http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/bisbee/index.html

Story: Harry E. Wootton

Bisbee tidbit: did you know that Harry E. Wootton, owner of Wootton Hardware on upper Main St and a member of the Knights Templar, was the only person charged for kidnapping in the Bisbee Deportation case? He lived at 408 Tombstone Canyon until the late 1940s or early 1950s, and his name is set in the concrete on the sidewalk in front of his house. The house cost him about $6000 to build. The retaining wall cost almost another $6000.

Robert Lenon, author of It Seems Like Only Yesterday, tells these stories about Harry Wootton (which Mr. Lenon spells "Wooten").

"Harry was a fine gent and ran a first-class hardware store downtown. I don't know how he kept his business going because he was so kind-hearted that he would often give stuff away when somebody came along with a sob story. One day a fellow came by who had a patent for an appliance that he wanted to mass produce. So Harry looked at it and asked, "What's this?" "It's a double line; it's a clothesline without pins." It had two lines, one of which had metal clips to catch and hold the laundered clothes. Instead of handling loose pins you'd snap your clothes onto a fastener on the parallel line. The inventor had made a thousand of them or so, and Harry bought maybe 300. He used a pair for display in his store, but I don't think he ever sold a single one!

"Some years earlier Harry had had a Model T Ford. Most people know what the old Model Ts looked like, but nowadays not so many know how they worked. The had three pedals - reverse, brake, and low gear. Years earlier Harry had gotten his car in a real jam on a dead-end Bisbee street. I remember seeing him sitting on a chair at a party showing guests how he contrived to turn his 12-foot car around in a 14-foot driveway. Another time, in similar fashion, he demonstrated how he had been forced to turn around fast because of a grass fire at the dead end of a narrow alley. He was moving his feet the right way, spinning the (imaginary) steering wheel in the proper direction, and looking over his shoulder at the fire. He did all that on a kitchen chair and told the story, all at the same time. It was quite a workout, as good an exercise as you'll see - going through all those driving maneuvers on a kitchen chair. He was in the wrong profession. He should have been in a circus!

"Even though he was a nice guy and a soft touch, Harry lost favor with some of the townsfolk after an incident during World War I - the Bisbee Deportation... Phelps Dodge deported several hundred men (including my friend Harvey James) because of their alledged involvement with the Industrial Workers of the World. Harry Wooten was one of the armed PD "deputies" who rounded up the "troublemakers" and herded them into railroad cattle cars to be run out of town. Some of the deportees eventually returned to Bisbee, and they and their families refused to trade with Wooten because he'd been a Company man."




This excerpt is from Robert Lenon's book, It Seems Like Only Yesterday: Mining and Mapping in Arizona's First Century (Vol.2: Bisbee and Patagonia), pages 55-57.