The city of Bisbee is the center of the geographical and mining regions known, respectively, as the sky islands and the copper borderlands. This book—Bisbee: The Alchemical City of the Borderlands—is a visual and historical journey through that “greater Bisbee.”

It is a journey undertaken on an historical stage that embraces indigenous peoples, Spanish and anglo-American colonists and immigrants from across the world. This land is also a spiritual and mythological realm of legends told by the people who have lived and died here. Bisbee is the border. Bisbee is many borders.

The alchemical city refers to the processes of transformation both material and spiritual that is at the heart of the history of Bisbee. Alchemy involves not only the purification and transmutation of lead, mercury, and copper into gold, it also symbolizes the rebirth of Bisbee from a copper mining city into the tourist city of the 21st century.