In its heyday as a mining metropolis, Bisbee was one of the largest towns between San Francisco and New Orleans, a copper smelter of ethnicities and religions. Its immigrant citizens were citizens of the world, each one in search of the American dream. Many found and lived it here.

The population peaked at 20,000 intrepid pioneers. All of them confronted (and most conquered) the steep odds, infernal gods and Mother Nature. In their time off the men wore hats and pocket watches and played faro in local saloons. The women donned gloves, used parasols, and accounted for much of the town's above-ground business and pleasure (superstitious miners forbade them from working underground).

They traveled alone and together to the mines, churches and pubs, ferried by trolley, mule and horse-drawn carriage. Beer and prostitutes poured forth in steady streams from Brewery Gulch. And a reddish-brown metallic element was the currency that fueled it all.

On the first floor of the museum is the exhibit honoring those peopel and that time. "Bisbee: Urban Outpost on the Frontier," is an in-depth look at the depths – and heights – to which miners and settlers went to dynamite a community and a living out of solid rock.

It was the dawning of the Age of Electricity. It too was a "wireless" world, if only because most homes and businesses didn't have any. A global society of instant energy, mass production and nonstop innovation beckoned. The small, mountainside town of Bisbee heeded the call.

Not only will a trip to the Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum return grandparents to a bygone era, today's tech-driven youth will be transported to a distinctly dissimilar place and time – a time when there was no substitute for a strong back, a stronger will and a long shift in an underground office surrounded by walls of metal-rich rock.

Plus, everybody is sure to learn something; hundreds of school classes have made the Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum a field-trip favorite.