Out There Guy Rediscovers The Townspeople Of Another Century. By Kevin Franklin ROY SIBLEY FLOORS his Stutz Bearcat, raising a cloud of dust and startling a herd of heat-drowsy mules. Beneath his goggles, his eyes dance with crazed joy. He races through a mining camp towards his 20-room mansion with oak floors and a second floor balcony. Workers look up in exasperation as the speeding madman disappears around a bend, but they say nothing. After all, he's the mine manager. The picture windows in Sibley's mansion overlook Copper Creek Canyon in the Galiuro Mountains. Sibley lives in a remote corner of a remote mountain chain in the wilds of Arizona. The luxurious mansion seems out of place in the rough-and-ready mining camp; but the group of wealthy, cigar-smoking investors waiting for Sibley in the lounge seem even more out of place. Just outside the mansion door, a few Indians are working on the last of the stonework. Occasionally they sneak glances at the businessmen--who look back at them in mutual amazement and fear. Right then a tremendous blast rattles the glass, the building and everyone in it. A man in the hills above looks up from the flower he'd been studying. A large smile grows across his face. This is Martin E. Tew. He's glad to hear the progress at the copper mine. He returns to studying the flower. While trained as a lawyer and currently a partner with Sibley in the Minnesota Arizona Mining Company, Tew's passion is nature. Today he's traipsing through the wilderness with a collection of wooden signs. It's become his habit to write his poetry onto boards and nail them to trees in the forests around the mine. As he moves off into the shrubbery, the last lines of one of his poems are visible under his arm: "How welcome was the pilgrim to our gates/Who knew and spoke the language of the gods." A few miles away, a sturdy woman also looks up when the mine blast goes off. She then turns to look at the dust cloud trailing behind the Stutz, shaking her head in amused exasperation at the nut behind the wheel. She is Belle Sibley, and has never understood her husband's need to drive so fast in a place so small. She turns back to her work--repainting the words "Copper Creek" on the plaque beneath the post office foundation. Belle is the postmistress for the town, and it seems her work is never done. Almost 200 people live in Copper Creek in little houses alongside the creekbed. Evening is beginning to descend on this place and the smells of cooking are reaching the hungry miners down in the Old Reliable Mine. It's just another day in Copper Creek, circa 1910. Closing in on a century later, all the houses are gone, the mines are dormant and the only smell in the air is of the grassy marsh down by the creek. But you can still feel the ghosts of the town's eccentric former inhabitants. While the moods and thoughts of the characters that made up Copper Creek will probably never be revealed, the actions mentioned above are all documented in Arizona Historical Society records. According to one story, Tew's signs of poetry could still be found out here 20 years ago. A complete version of "A Welcome Pilgrim" is in the Copper Creek file. I'm always ambivalent when writing about these places. On the one hand, I'd never want some otherwise ignorant jackass to learn of this place. On the other, if the stories and history around Copper Creek are forgotten, these buildings will no longer have any meaning or value anyway. Without the retelling of their histories, they're just piles of stone for target practice. As I fall asleep in what 100 years ago would have been a bustling town, I take some consolation in reasoning that most of the idiot vandal types probably aren't big on the written word. Getting There The Oak Grove Canyon and Rhodes Peak 7-1/2 minute topographical maps are recommended.

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