Santa Rita History
Although the Spanish are credited with the discovery of copper ore at this location in 1800, the Apache people were familiar with the rich copper outcrops here long before that. The 1800 discovery is attributed to a Spanish military officer stationed at a nearby fort.
The first settlement, Santa Rita del Cobre—meaning "Santa Rita of Copper"—was established here in 1804 as part of an early effort to mine the copper deposits. The settlement and the mines here were under constant threat from hostile Apaches. By the 1820s the settlement had already been evacuated three times. However, the exceptionally rich copper ore continued to draw the Spanish miners back to the site.
The mines were intermittently worked by Americans starting in the 1820s, but hostilities with the Apaches continued to make sustained mining an impossibility. An 1872 treaty with the Apaches resulted in new activity at the mines, and in 1881 Santa Rita received its first post office. By 1884 the town had five hundred residents.
The mines faded in the late 1800s as ore values decreased and costs remained high due to the isolated location. Santa Rita was reborn as a company town when the Chino Copper Company started open-pit mining here in 1910. In 1917 alone, the open pit mine returned $10,000,000 in profits. In 1932 the operation came under control of the Kennecott Copper Corporation.
Santa Rita peaked in the 1920s with a population of around 6,000 people. Over subsequent decades, the town was moved several times to accommodate the expanding open pit, finally being abandoned in 1967.
