Background Report - Arizona Town Hall

financial center of the Arizona territory. Bisbee was typical of the commodity-producing
towns that once defined vast areas of the American West, and this is a remarkable story to
celebrate.
As cultural institutions, we can be central players in the economic well-being and revitalization
of our respective communities—a responsibility key to the survival of rural museums
need to assume in order to survive. Mining has always been a volatile enterprise, and with the
closure of most of its mines during the mid-twentieth century, Bisbee reinvented itself by
capitalizing on its history, aligning itself with the growth of Arizona’s tourism industry. Today’s
Bisbee prospers because of this transformation and the lively diversity of its residents, whose
creative energy is rooted in a powerful blend of historic preservation and the arts.
Underlying the Bisbee Mining & Historical Museum’s conceptual framework of preserving
and promoting a vibrant cultural heritage is the hardrock reality of economic sustainability,
both for local institutions and communities. In Bisbee, residents work together to both
enhance the tourism experience, and to sustain the unique sense of place of the community.
Such collaboration preserves the unique rural heritage of Bisbee, while adding to a shared
sense of belonging.
A Well-Kept Secret
John A. Ware, Executive Director, The Amerind Foundation, Dragoon
The Amerind Foundation was established in 1937 as an archaeological research institute
dedicated to the advancement of knowledge about the Native Peoples of the Americas.
The Amerind campus is located on a 1600 acre former cattle ranch in Texas Canyon, northern
Cochise County, about sixty miles east of Tucson. Amerind’s founder, New England
industrialist William Shirley Fulton, chose this location because he wanted Amerind’s
research efforts to be far from the distractions of a major metropolitan area.
sites in the Southwestern Borderlands, culminating in the multi-year Joint Casas Grandes
Project in northern Chihuahua—one of the largest archaeological projects ever conducted in
the Southwest. The nature of archaeological research and funding for basic research began
to change in the 1960s and by the late 1970s it was no longer possible for small research
centers to compete for scarce federal research dollars. As the discipline changed, the Amerind
adapted by modifying its mission. Since 1980 the Amerind has supported the basic research
of others through advanced seminars, a visiting scholar program, and professional
publications. Today, the Amerind sponsors up to ten advanced seminars a year through an
active collaboration with the Society for American Archaeology, the University of
Arizona, Arizona State University, and other regional universities.
Within a few years of its founding the Amerind established a museum and art gallery to
exhibit its growing collection of art and artifacts. Open to the public only by appointment, the
Amerind Museum would eventually house one of the finest private collections of American
Indian art and material culture in the country, but it remained, by design, a closely kept secret
during its first fifty years. In a letter to a colleague in the 1960s, long-time Amerind director
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