30 March 2018
Thousand Trails Resort, Cottonwood
Arizona has led copper production in the U.S. since 1910 and still enjoys that distinction, producing approximately 64% of domestic copper.
The Town of Clarkdale, Arizona is located on the banks of the Verde River in the north central part of Arizona. It is a thriving community and is the gateway to the Sycamore Canyon Wilderness Area in the beautiful Verde Valley. Founded in 1912, by the United Verde Copper Company to provide housing and services for the employees of their copper smelter that started in 1915. Business boomed in Clarkdale and Jerome until the mid-50s, when the ore ran out and the smelter closed down.
In Clarkdale’s old high school, the Copper Art Museum houses and exhibits selected pieces from the thousands collected over three generations by the Minnesota-based Meinke family, which has funded the entire effort. They bought the school in 2002 and opened in 2009.
The collection was everything copper I could imagine (and not imagine). We were told when entering that we could take pictures and touch the items.
Of a personal historical note, they had a small display of cook pans. In 1938, an employee of Revere invented copper-clad cookware, which went into production and was known as Revere Ware Revere Copper and Brass Inc. headquartered in Rome, New York (my birth place) with several plants and product divisions. So a little bit info (thanks to wiki) about that……
Rome Manufacturing was established in 1892 as a division of Rome Brass Copper with manufacturing facilities in Rome, NY. It produced a huge variety (by the 1920’s it claimed to have made over 10,000 different products for the home).
The 1928 merger of five northeastern copper manufacturers (including Taunton-New Bedford and Rome Brass & Copper) produced the Revere Copper and Brass Corporation in 1929, the largest copper manufacturer in the US.
Cookware (then a minor facet of its business) was assigned to the recently upgraded Rome Manufacturing plant in NY; which then became the headquarters of the Manufactured Products Division for Revere Copper and Brass, Inc.
In 1932, a Rome Manufacturing salesman suggested that substituting chrome plating for the the tin lining in copper cookware should greatly improve durability. Although logical, the concept was accepted without proper testing, and disgruntled housewives soon found that cooking potatoes together with salt caused the chrome plating to simply flake off – OOPS!
The chrome cladding failure resulted in new management being sent to the Rome plant, with the directive to “Make something useful!”. The search for an improved cooking surface was given priority, but other aspects of cookware design such as rolled rims for lightweight rigidity and gently sloped bottoms for easy cleaning were also considered.
Revere expanded it’s production capacity, opening first the Riverside, CA plant in 1949, then the Clinton, IL plant in 1950. Riverside was closed in 1962 and Rome mothballed from 1968-1974. When the Rome plant restarted copper clad production in 1974, it used the new hallmark and included the production plant.
Financial losses incurred by its aluminum operations ultimately forced Revere Copper and Brass, Inc. to seek bankruptcy protection in 1982. Following reorganization in 1985, Revere Ware Incorporated (the cookware division) was sold to Corning Glass Inc.; in 1986 the Rome facility was closed; and in 1989, the spare parts program was discontinued. Whew… that’s that……back to some pictures from the museum….