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A smelter town called Sasco

Sasco in the early 19th century, was short lived and ravaged by the Spanish flu And indigence until it closed in September 15, 1919.

The Southern Arizona Smelting Company was founded in August of 1906 with the amount of $1,500,000 in Capital and 800,000 in stock by E.B. Gage, president of Imperial Copper Company. This town was a smelter town. You ask what is smelting? It is where heat is used on ore in order to extract a base metal or metals, copper, silver or gold. Sasco was used to process ore from the Silverbell Mts. By the fall of 1909, about 245,540 tons of copper ore had been processed here.

A piece of Sasco history, still standing is a blasting furnace that use to do the smelting,

A graph of the inside of the blasting furnace

This diagram shows you exactly the parts of the furnace. 350 tons blast furnace that melted the ore at 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit.

Sasco had saloons, stores and a post office and jail.The town had over 600 people and had its share of criminal activity! Here is an article in the newspaper about a man who wanted to kill two men, but he, himself got shot!

Sasco was tragically short lived due to financially troubled times, and the Spanish flu that swept through Arizona, which hit hard in the early 19th century. Many of the victims of this pandemic are buried at the silver bell cemetery.

I found this picture on google, it used to be the jail in Sasco, it wasn’t there anymore at my recent visit here in May 2020.

Remnants of the smelter are still left, yet is in disarray and has been terribly vandalized and used as a shooting range with shotgun shells encrusted all over in the desert sand.

What is left of the Rockland Hotel, is sad to see a piece of Arizona history in such a sad state!

I wish people would have some respect for our historical places, This is unfortunate. It is still worth a visit if you want to see it. Take 226 off 1-10 in Red Rock, go all the way up the dirt road past the cattle ranch. Keep going straight up and you will see Hotel Rockland on the right in the background!

Thanks for reading and I really hope you liked this article on Sasco! Keep liking, sharing and subscribing! Stay safe out there and as always I accept donations on Paypalme./VanessaRossi1971