Address
Address11 Howell Avenue
Bisbee, AZ 85603
Phelps Dodge built the four-story Copper Queen Hotel in the style of an Italian villa to serve investors, politicians, executives, and other dignitaries visiting Bisbee, and the guests have included a young Teddy Roosevelt, Gen. John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, and actors John Wayne, Lee Marvin and Julia Roberts. It opened in 1902.
A portion of the hillside was blasted away to make room for the hotel, and the walls were constructed two feet thick, which keeps the hotel cooler in the summer. The lobby featured mosaic tile from Italy, still visible at the entrance. The cathedral ceiling in the Palm Room reportedly was originally fitted with Tiffany glass. The front desk was fabricated out of Tiger Oak and surrounded by a wrought iron security cage. The safe was used at the Copper Queen Mine until it became too small for the company payroll.
The pool was built into the ground on what used to be the hotel’s parking lots. Because of the steep hillside, the pool is accessed from the building’s second floor.
The hotel’s saloon features a century-old and nearly life-size nude portrait of the British actress Lily Langtry. Langtry became a celebrity in Britain and the United States in the early 1900s and had a number of affairs, including one with the future King Edward VI of England. The town of Langtry, Texas, was named for her, and Judge Roy Bean, an ardent admirer, named his saloon there after her.
The hotel claims to have three resident ghosts. The most famous is Julia Lowell, a woman in her early 30s who purportedly ws a prostitute on Brewery Gulch and used the rooms in the hotel for her clients. She supposedly fell in love with a client and took her life at the hotel after he dumped her. The others are an older gentleman in a cape and top hat who smokes cigars and a young boy who drowned in the San Pedro River.
The hotel has 52 rooms, all non-smoking. A handful of specialty rooms are named after Roosevelt, Wayne, Langtry, Lowell and others with ties to the hotel or the area.
