Ajo is Spanish for garlic. No one really knows why it was named that, but it was and is only 30 miles from the Mexican border. Native Americans and the Spanish first used the wealth of minerals in the area long before white men did.
It was strange seeing an old military jet setting on a dirt road
.
Ajo is only 190 miles from Blythe and we are glad we made the trip because it's not a place we'd like to winter in the future.
New Cornelia, an open pit copper mine, closed in 1987.
The New Cornelia mine museum was in a church that is beautiful in the Spanish style architecture. We had Jose as a personal tour guide who explained the whole process of copper from ground to ingot. Jose spent 40 minutes tell us of his 27 years in the mine and his father who preceded him in the 1920's. Jose lost his job in a labor dispute in 1984 shortly before the mine closed.
Behind Donna is a sluice pipe that crosses the highway. The importance of this as Jose told us is that when the mine closed Freeport torn down all the plants, otherwise they would be taxed, working or not, but left the R&R and this pipe over the road so someday when the reopen the mine they won't have to appeal to the state to bridge the road in the future.
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