Jerome, Arizona's Billion-Dollar Copper Empire Collapsed Overnight — Nobody Can Explain Why

Jerome, Arizona's Billion-Dollar Copper Empire Collapsed Overnight — Nobody Can Explain Why Jerome, Arizona once produced roughly a billion dollars in copper and was home to as many as 15,000 people, and today it's known as America's largest ghost town, with its own jail having physically slid over a hundred feet down the hillside. This video breaks down the real story behind Jerome's collapse, from William Andrews Clark's United Verde Copper Company and James "Rawhide Jimmy" Douglas's rival UVX bonanza mine, to the three forces that killed the town at once: the 1929 stock market crash that crushed copper prices, decades of open-pit blasting that turned the mountain into an unstable sponge of tunnels, and an ore body that was simply running out. You'll learn how Phelps Dodge shut down the United Verde for good in 1953, why bulldozers nearly erased the entire town, and how a small group of holdouts founded the Jerome Historical Society and rebranded their dying mining camp as "America's largest ghost city," turning it into the artist colony and tourist destination it is today. We also cover Jerome's underground mine fires, its brutal labor history, and why rising copper prices in the age of electric vehicles and data centers could one day bring mining interest back to the mountain. If you're into American ghost towns, mining history, or boomtown collapse stories, this is the full breakdown. Like, subscribe, and tell us in the comments: was Jerome killed by the crash, the company, or the mountain itself?