Mineral Mecca
Here I am in Phoenix. It has poured rain since I got here. The city got .41 inches of rain today and the locals are hopping around doing a rain dance they're so happy. I am not amused. I didn't even bring an umbrella or coat on this trip because it was supposed to be 75 and sunny. I brought sunscreen instead.
Phoenix it totally flat, there aren't very many building, and the streets are laid out on a grid. As a result, it's totally disorienting. And since it's been cloudy all day it's taken me almost all day to figure out which way is north. In fact, I was five minutes late for my meeting because I went the wrong way.
But then I got to my meeting and I was suddenly in a WONDERLAND! My meetings this week are all at Phelps Dodge and the corporate headquarters is a Mineral Mecca. In the lobby, the have a huge wall of feldspar (so I was told) with blasting grooves in it. The reception desk has a receptacle in it filled with beautiful minerals (you're not allowed to call them rocks). The countertops are black marble or onyx or something with copper flecks in it. The outside of the building is a copper sheath. The square it's on downtown is called Copper Square. The floor that houses the Legal Department has a stunning collection of minerals in a glass case -- malachite, azurite, etc. There is a grand stairway linking every floor that is open from bottom to top (bad for people afraid of heights, like me) and up one side if the feldspar wall with blasting grooves and up the other side are these beautiful mosaics made from minerals, like porphry, malachite, something gold, copper, all kinds of things. It's beautiful. The floor that houses the executive front office has a huge display of fabulous specimens, some of which you can see the gasses bubbling out. The azurite is shockingly blue -- it's amazing. There's a specimen with azurite and malachite combined. The Board table has copper flecks in it. There's a copper sample turning green before your very eyes. There's some wild white thing with spikes shooting up. The whole thing blew me away.
There's also an elborate western saddle outside the board room, but no-one could tell me why. It's right next to the portraits of Mr. Phelps and Mr. Dodge. Also, there are huge murals of open pit mines, mine tunnels, mine trucks, etc., everywhere. Everyehere you turned there would be some new form of rock/mineral incorporated into the architecture.
From the windows you get a 360 degree view of Phoenix. You can see Squaw Peak mountain, the airport, Lookout Mountain preserve, Papago mountain, South mountain, etc.
I would like to live inside the Phelps Dodge building.
I also learned a few interesting things about Phoenix:
1. It did not exist at all in any way whatsoever, not even as an intersection or a tent, until 1870.
2. No-one liked it here until the 1950s, when air-conditioning became affordable.
3. A long time ago the land Phoenix sit on was riddled with 300 miles of canals dug by the Hokoham Indians. Then they gave up and went away and the Pima and Maricopa Indians moved in and planted corn.
4. The first white men to set up shop anywhere near here were Union soldiers in the Civil War who built Fort McDowell east of Scottsdale. They reopened the old Hohokam canals.
5. Copper and cows run this place.
posted by Anonymous @ 11:08 PM
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