About 39 miles south east from Parker Arizona you will find the ruins of the Swansea Copper mine and former townsite of Swansea. To reach the site you travel about 10 miles on a paved road and then another 20 miles on what is called a primitive road through the desert and into the Buckskin mountains. In Arizona they have all of these roads in the desert that have a sign saying warning primitive road not regularly maintained travel at your own risk. They run from a fair road to just trails through the rocks. You can tell that they occasionally have a road grader go over them. Prospectors began working this area in 1862 when a small amount of silver was discovered. It soon ran out and then in 1908 a Welchman named George Michell and some French investors bought the claim for the copper. He built a blast furnace, smelter, power plant & water system. By 1909 it had a population of 500 and boasted saloons, post office, general store 7 even a movie house. The first trains arrived on the new railroad in 1910 and by May they were producing 50 tons of a copper a day. Unfortunately Mitchell invested to much above ground and not enough below ground in the mines and they declared bankruptcy a year later in 1911. In 1915 Ernest C Lane became manage and ran it successfully for different investors until the declining copper market of the great depression caused it to fail again. the last reported milling was in 1944. It was then dismantled for the steal that the mill contained. Today all that is there are the ruins and the workers cottages that are being restored.
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