business

Heavily Investigated

They say every room here is haunted — it only depends on whether you're receptive. Climb the staircase past the antique furniture and the dim tile, and the stories find you: a woman named Julia who drifts the upper floors and, guests swear, slips into men's rooms uninvited; a bearded old man in top hat and cape who appears in a doorway, trailing cigar smoke; and small footsteps, things nudged off nightstands by a child no one can see. Stay the night, the staff warn, and the hotel notices you first.

For the record, the Copper Queen opened in 1902, built by the Phelps Dodge Mining Company to house the investors and dignitaries it wooed during Bisbee's copper boom — a tile-floored, Tiffany-glassed showpiece, and Arizona's longest continuously operated hotel, predating statehood itself. It's on the National Register of Historic Places, having survived the 1975 mine closure that turned the town half ghost. The documented guest list runs to Roosevelt and Houdini; the rest of the roster, you'll understand, is harder to verify.