If you’ve ever fantasized about ditching it all and hitting the road in a vintage Airstream head south to The Shady Dell. Although you won’t actually be able to drive, you can get a feel for the life by spending the night in one of a dozen vintage trailers.

After channeling your inner movie star, step out of your trailer to begin your Arizona adventure. The real treasures of Arizona lie below the surface, and Bisbee is the perfect place to start exploring. In the 1800s Arizona was a remote territory inhabited by hostile Apache tribes, mostly just a pass-through for folks heading west to make their fortune in California’s Gold Rush. That began changing with the discovery of silver in nearby Tombstone (Tombstone, Arizona: A Glimpse of the Bawdy Old Wild West) and copper in Bisbee. Soon, Bisbee was the largest city between Houston and Los Angeles, eventually becoming one of the most productive mining districts in the world, yielding over 3 billion pounds of copper, plus gold, silver, lead, and zinc.

Just down the road from The Shady Dell is the gigantic open pit Lavender mine which swallowed most of the adjacent town of Lowell in its heyday. When production stopped in 1974, it left a hole covering 300 acres and extending down 900 feet.

To get a close look into an underground mine, head down the road to the Copper Queen. Mining began here in the 1880s, and by the early 1900s the Copper Queen was the most productive copper mine in Arizona. Production ceased in 1975, and it opened soon after for tours.

Today, visitors don hard hats and a miner’s lamp before hopping on the the original mine train and heading underground.

Many of the guides are former mine workers, so in addition to seeing original artifacts such as an iron toilet car (brrr!) and shaft elevator, you get a first hand account of mining life.

For more mining history, head into town to the Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum which is housed in the former offices of the owners of the Copper Queen mine. In addition to town and mining history, the museum has an extensive collection of Bisbee minerals. To dispel the idea that the Arizona territory was a desert wasteland with nothing to offer the nation, mineral specimens from Bisbee were displayed at world’s fairs and other expositions, sending the message that Arizona’s mineral riches would add to the wealth of the United States. Thanks in part to Bisbee’s mineral riches, Arizona obtained statehood in 1912.

No matter where you travel in the state you can find reminders of Arizona’s rich mining history – from active mines, to decommissioned mines offering tours, to abandoned sites encountered while hiking. In fact, one source estimates that the state has over 200,000 abandoned mine features.