Removable and Place-Based Economies: Alternative Futures for America’s Deserts - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 297

FIGURE 16.5
The mine at Ajo, Arizona, idled by international price wars, is the subject of a small museum.
FIGURE 16.6
The boarded Ajo hospital, one of many large public buildings funded by the mine; others are only partly
occupied.
volunteer maintenance can only go so far—and as population dwindles, so do these
resources. While Ajo is far above the squalor of truly negligent company-town operations,
it is faced with watching its beautiful but outsized architectural resources decay. Ironically,
a town that invested less in large-scale improvements might be better able to reuse and
sustain infrastructure after the mining collapse.
Approaching Ajo from the southeast, an astonishing geological formation appears out
of the desert. Dead flat on top, monolithic gray brown except for a peculiar white layer, it
stretches for miles, completely hiding the townsite from view. This is the spoil dump from
the mine. An entire mountain, in effect, has been exported onto the desert.
This degree of landscape destruction also has secondary consequences: signs in Ajo
notify the public that, because it is already despoiled, the surroundings are deemed
suitable for a new high-voltage electric transmission line. Similarly, the nation's largest