Tour Bisbee

For many years, visitors saw what they could of Bisbee from the narrow strip of street that runs up the bottom of Tombstone Canyon.  A few more adventurous souls would walk up a side road and those on the annual stairclimb would get beyond the basics.

But with the creation of Lavender Jeep Tours by Bisbee native Tom Mosier back in 2001, there became almost no limit to which parts of greater Bisbee the visitor could see.

Tom grew up in Bisbee in its heyday, got a start in the heavy-equipment business here and then moved on to own his own equipment dealerships in Phoenix and Tucson. He sold those in the 1990s and returned to Bisbee, to the home that his parents had build here.

Ever restless, he and wife Ginger, after returning from a trip to Sedona where they had taken a Pink Jeep Tour, decided that Bisbee needed the same service. Thus was born Lavender Jeep Tours.  They chose the name because it alluded to the other bright color on a Jeep tour and because it played off Bisbee’s famous Lavender Pit, named after a company executive.

The short-wheel-base Wrangler can go anywhere in Bisbee there’s even a hint of a road. The city is different in that it’s build on steep hills and the streets were laid out in a time before automobiles. Some of the community’s “two-way” roads are barely wide enough for a single vehicle, and driving etiquette in Bisbee has to take into consideration who backs up when two cars meet on the road.  (Bisbee’s fire department maintains a 1940s vintage fire engine so it can have one narrow enough to negotiate some of the streets.)

Tom’s Jeeps can go anywhere visitors want to go and his most popular tour has been the “historic Bisbee” trip, back and forth across and up the side canyons and streets that most people never see.  Even many long-time residents take the tour to get views of the town they haven’t seen since they were kids on bikes.  Tom and his drivers end up making quite a few stops since the scenery from the higher roads and trails is almost universally photogenic.

Another trip that has had regular customers from the beginning has been the “sky island” tour.  Southern Arizona is basin-and-range country, with mountain islands popping up out of the valleys every few dozen miles.  These are the Chiricahuas, the Huachucas, the Dragoons and the Mules, just to name a few in the neighborhood.

Because these sky islands are isolated, each has some differences in flora and fauna.  Bisbee sits in the Mule Mountains, and just north of the town is an area known as Juniper Flats.  It’s host to much of the county’s communications towers, but there’s also lots of backcountry filled with alligator juniper, Apache pine and other trees that grow well at 7,000 feet but not at the 5,300-foot elevation of the city.

Tom discovered that visitors wanted to see “all” of Bisbee.  The town is divided by the pit into three areas, Old Bisbee, which was the only part of town in the first couple of decades, Warren, built during an expansion of the mines just after 1900, and San Jose, built as a bedroom community for Ft. Huachuca during its growth spurt in the 1950s.  The latter two areas were incorporated into the city in 1959.

And a few miles further south is Naco, a community that is home to Turquoise Valley Golf Course and which sits right on the border with Mexico.

The “greater Bisbee tour” takes visitors through all of that area, highlighting the executive mansions in the Warren area, along with the Warren Ballpark, the oldest major-league-size ball field in the nation.

Lavender Jeep Tours offers several other trips, as well, and can customize tours to meet the visitor’s needs.  Tom has had numerous folks return time after time, either to take friends or family on the same trip they took earlier or to take the next in the series of tours around the Bisbee area.