Christmas, Arizona
Christmas, Arizona is an uninhabited mining town in Gila County, central Arizona. The nearby Christmas mine was staked on Christmas Day 1902 after a boundary change moved the San Carlos Apache Reservation. Prospectors George B. Chittenden and N. H. Mellor reportedly exclaimed, “We filled our stockings and named the place Christmas.” The mine produced about 55 million pounds of copper (worth over $10 million) along with some silver and gold from 1905 to 1943. The town grew beside the mine, with a meat market, general store, barbershop, school, dairy, hat shop, and two worker clubs. The post office opened in 1905 and was especially busy during holidays when people sent Christmas postmarks.
The mine changed owners, closed during the copper slump in 1921, and reopened in 1925 with a plant that could process 500 tons of ore a day. By the early 1930s the population reached about 1,000, but copper prices fell and the town shrank to around 100 residents by 1931. The post office closed for good in 1935, though holiday mail continued to Winkelman for years. In the 1950s and 1960s the mine expanded and a new 1,700-foot shaft was planned in 1956; later the site became an open pit and many buildings were moved or torn down. The population was 180 at the 1960 census. The mine is also where minerals apachite, junitoite, and ruizite were discovered. Final copper production ended in the early 1980s, and the mine is now owned by Freeport-McMoRan, closed to the public.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 22:32 (CET).