There's a tug of war between townspeople who support a mine and the economic benefits it promises and Native American groups that consider the land sacred.
By Anita Snow The Associated Press SUPERIOR — Growing up in a mining family that goes back generations, Mayor Mila Besich knew the Oak Flat Campground as the place where she attended union picnics as a girl and in earlier years her parents stood in a clearing to hear the World Series on the radio.
People are also reading… “Our town is going to be the most affected,” said the mayor. “What about our culture?” Oak Flat is on Tonto National Forest property to be conveyed to Resolution under a land exchange that Congress approved in a 2014 rider to a must-pass defense bill. Nosie said he believes many townspeople quietly back his fight, but “they cannot openly show their support for me.”
Brenda Astor, Resolution’s principal adviser for Native affairs and a San Carlos Apache member, noted that dozens of other enrolled members also work for the mining company. That’s a lot for a town still clawing back economically after the Magma copper mine first shut down in 1982, later opened for a few years, then closed for good in 1996. The closure devastated a community so small that it has no stoplight and can be traversed by car in just over three minutes.
“We didn’t cross the border, it crossed us,” said Manny Guzman, whose family in the area goes back seven generations. His ancestor Manuelita Guzman is buried in the Historic Pinal Cemetery, also the resting place of Wyatt Earp’s common-law wife, Mattie Earp.
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