Young Men’s Christian Association – YMCA Miami, AZ
Location: 155 Miami Avenue
The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) was built in 1917 and was a significant community resource, particularly for the booming copper mining community of Miami, Arizona. It served as a place for lodging, socializing, and recreation.
The YMCA housed a basketball court, a two-lane bowling alley, pool tables, ping-pong tables, a meeting room with a kitchen, a swimming pool with a diving board, and 22 boarding rooms which provided living quarters for male miners who were single or working in Miami without their wives and/or families.
The YMCA was constructed in 1917 with an initial budget of $103,000. The project faced unforeseen cost overruns, requiring an additional $60,000 to be raised. The building construction was completed in February 1918 with the majority of funding made by the Miami Copper Company.
Segregation plagued the early years of Miami, Globe and the entire nation. In the early years of the YMCA, Mexican-born and Mexican-American mine laborers had a separate building space, to gather socially and recreationally, located south of the YMCA.
Beginning in 1954, along with the landmark federal case, Brown vs. Board of Education, Miami began to desegregate in all areas of public gatherings, well ahead of the Federal mandate of the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
For many decades, the YMCA was a major community gathering place providing meeting space for mine executives, community leaders and local civic organizations. A place where thousands of kids learned to swim and play basketball, and a social gathering place for the youth of Miami.
This original concept of the YMCA building closed in 1978.
MIAMI, AZ and the COPPER CORRIDOR
“Lighting the world and connecting the planet with the copper we produce.”
ASARCO – https://www.asarco.com/
BHP (Broken Hill Proprietary) – https://www.bhp.com/
CAPSTONE, Pinto Valley – https://capstonecopper.com/
Copper Fox Metals – https://copperfoxmetals.com/
Freeport McMoRan – https://www.fcx.com/
KGHM, Carlota – https://kghm.com/en/about-us/our-industry/copper-market
Resolution Copper – https://resolutioncopper.com/
