Santa Rita, New Mexico: Two Centuries of Copper Mining

Chris Huggard, Ph.D.
Professor of History, Author

Terrence  M. Humble
Local Historian, Preservation Activist, Former Miner

This presentation will offer a synopsis of two centuries of copper mining at Santa Rita, New Mexico. We will examine the “discovery” of the copper, the emergent mining techniques in the nineteenth century, and the most important era of open-pit copper mining. We will discuss the technologies, the economics, the workers, and the community, especially in the twentieth century, and the consequences of the growth of the massive open pit.

Chris Huggard earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of New Mexico in 1994 and is a professor of history at Northwest Arkansas Community College. He has published extensively on the history of mining in the American Southwest/West and is author with Art Gomez of Forests Under Fire: A Century of Ecosystem Mismanagement in the Southwest (Univ of AZ Press, 2001) and co-author with Terrence M. Humble of Santa Rite del Cobre: A Copper Mining Community in New Mexico (Univ Press of Colorado, 2012), winner of the 2012 Howard Bryan Western History Award, a 2012 Southwest Book Award, and the 2013 Clark C. Spence Award for Best Book in Mining History. Huggard is currently completing a book manuscript titled, On Pea Ridge: Civil War Battlefield, Community Memory, and the Making of a National Park.

Terrence M. Humble was born in Santa Rita and retired from Chino Mines as a diesel mechanic and foreman in 2001. He has been recording histories, saving documents, and participating in local preservation of Santa Rita since 1967, publishing several journal articles on his hometown’s history.

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