Superior, Arizona

The town of Superior is in northeastern Pinal County at the junction of US Highway 60 and Arizona Route 177. Just west of Superior is the Boyce Thompson Arboretum State Park. This is an area popular with Hollywood, and movies such as Eight Legged Freaks, How the West Was Won, The Prophecy and The Gauntlet were filmed here.

The history of Superior revolves mostly around the mining of copper, silver and gold. An Englishman by the name of George Lobb sold his holdings in the Golden Eagle Silver Mine to the Lake Superior and Arizona Mining Company in 1902, but he stayed in the area and platted the townsite of Superior that same year. He named the town after the mining company. The first postmaster took up office in December, 1902. In 1910, William Boyce Thompson arrived from Montana and bought the Silver Queen Mine (first worked in 1875) and renamed it the Magma Copper Company. Then he bought out Lake Superior and Arizona, adding their properties to the Magma holdings. At first, Thompson sent his ore by wagon to Florence and then by rail to the big smelter at Hayden for refining. Then he built the Magma Arizona Railroad to carry his copper ore from Superior to Webster in 1915. Come 1924 and he finally built a new smelter in Superior. Over the years, the Magma Mine turned into a huge open pit operation, one of the largest in Arizona. Magma Copper cut back operations in 1981 and since then, Superior has worked to position itself as a tourism and retirement center.