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Chicago Tribune
7 days ago
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
With exotic items as well as traditional offerings, new Wild Fork meat market in Aurora focuses on variety
With a variety of exotic items like alligator and wild boar along with more traditional meat and seafood items, the new Wild Fork shop in Aurora aims to offer a variety of options for carnivores and fish eaters alike. The Aurora Wild Fork meat and seafood market at 936 S. Route 59 opened in May and is the company's 12th location in Illinois, with a total of nearly 100 stores in the U.S. as well as locations in Canada. Wild Fork is known for its wide variety of frozen meats, seafood and specialty items, Josiah Correll, team leader at the Aurora location, said. He said early response to the new outlet has been better than expected. 'We carry the usual pork, beef, lamb and poultry but also have bison, elk, venison, duck, wild boar, ostrich and alligator,' Correll said. 'As far as coming to Aurora, this is in an up-and-coming neighborhood, and is in a position to serve a lot of people. So far, foot traffic has been very positive and we have exceeded our expectations as far as sales are concerned.' Correll said the opening of the shop in late spring dovetailed nicely with the start of the barbecue season, and also pointed to the more unusual items that can be purchased at the location. 'I think that people love it. They love that they can come here and try something different,' he said. 'It's something new and they explore a little bit. We try to make it accessible. We're not going to just have the go-to staples like regular ground beef or burgers, but something different if you want to dip your toes in the waters of making a little alligator tenderloin or elk or whatever.' While the staples from hot dogs and sausages to steaks and chops remain the best sellers, Correll said the specialty meat items 'are selling much better than you'd think.' 'People every day come in say, 'Tell me about the kangaroo or the ostrich,' absolutely. They want to know how to cook it, what does it taste like, what can I expect, what is a good way to prepare it,' he said. 'For me, the best way to prepare something is to keep it as simple as possible to really get the flavor.' The store receives two pallets of products three times a week equal to a couple thousand pounds in total. Correll said there is a 100% satisfaction guarantee for those who try one of the store's more exotic products and don't like it. 'If you didn't like something, we'll refund your money. We stand by our products,' he said. Products are flash frozen as soon as possible after being processed, he said. No butchering is offered at the store and items all come already packaged. Most of the beef comes from Nebraska and Colorado 'as well as some access to Brazilian and Argentinian beef and wagyu from Japan and Australia.' 'We want this to be your go-to spot for meat and seafood. We want to be your new modern-day butcher,' Correll said. Allen Jorzak of Streamwood said he heard about Wild Fork thanks to a friend in Florida. 'He lives in Florida and does a lot of barbecue and has been doing some promotional stuff for Wild Fork down in Florida on TV,' Jorzak said while shopping at the Aurora location recently. 'I asked my wife about this and we thought we should check it out. One of the main things we came down for was a triple-blend burger we've had before elsewhere and liked.' Jorzak's wife Fran said she and her husband 'always shop together' adding that she 'likes to make everything.' 'The prices here look good,' she said. 'I'm checking everything including where it's sourced from.' Bryan Witte of Naperville was recently in for his first visit to the shop. 'My wife spoke to someone who told her this is the best-quality meat you can buy,' he said. 'I'm a home cook and I cook every meat and every meal. I'm looking for a wide variety of items and want to check out their scallops and maybe sushi-grade salmon.' Robin Gaffney of Naperville likewise said it was her first visit and that a friend, who is a former chef, recommended the store. 'He just loves it and anytime he has a recommendation I have to try it out,' she said while holding a box of oysters Rockefeller. 'It's so organized and easy to find things and I like different meats from different parts of the world.'
Herald Sun
09-05-2025
- Herald Sun
Dear Rachelle podcast: Ex-wife of key suspect in Rachelle's murder breaks silence
'Elise' still feels the chill of the words delivered 30 years ago. She was driving past Warilla Beach, south of Sydney, with her husband at the time, Kevin Steven Correll. 'He threatened to, if I ever left him, he would hunt me down and find me,' she said. 'He would cut me up in little pieces, bury me on the beach in individual spots, (and) cover me in lime so nobody could smell that there were body parts …' In an emotional interview, 'Elise' talks about death threats and domestic violence. Because she is a mother and sister, Elise has agreed to break her silence to describe fears that developed over a 11-year marriage to the man who would go on to become the prime suspect in the 2001 killing of Rachelle Childs. She told the Dear Rachelle podcast she left the country to escape him, fretting for her safety. LISTEN TO EPISODES 1-9 OF THE PODCAST BELOW: In a separate exchange, also in the mid 1990s, the then couple was driving through Gerroa, south of Sydney, when Elise commented on the beauty of the beach spot. He said, 'yeah, look at that bush there',' she said. 'He said 'that would be a good place to bury somebody, just make sure you behave yourself'.' Rachelle was found, on fire, in bushland off the road's edge at Gerroa on June 8, 2001. She was Mr Correll's sales employee at Camden Holden, and he was one of the last people to see her alive. He denies any involvement in Rachelle's death. When asked four questions about whether he had been abusive towards Elise and ever threatened to kill her, he said: 'I vehemently deny these allegations and the answer is NO to all 4 questions.' Elise was married to Mr Correll until 1997. Elise was a young wife when she went on national current affairs television to defend her husband after he had been charged with – and acquitted of – four sexual assaults in Sydney in the early 1980s. She believed Mr Correll's version of events at the time, in the beginnings of a relationship marked by 'coercive control' and grandiose gestures of love. Yet her view of the attacks shifted. She came to think: 'How come you're the common denominator in all this, everybody else can't be lying, why is everyone after you, why are they trying to get you … it can't have been a case of mistaken identity for every single one.' Elise described Mr Correll as 'wonderful' when they started dating and that he 'swept her off her feet'. Even after 10 years of marriage, he wrote a card suggesting they 'drop everything and celebrate'. However, over time she realised that Mr Correll's mood could turn, she said, like 'an angel turning black'. 'It's like he's got a dark passenger or something living inside him and the switch clicks and the dark passenger takes over,' she said. 'It's scary to watch it actually, to see when that happens because … his face changes, it contorts. It's not his face.' She recalled times when he hit her. After the pair went out for dinner with her sister, she went to sleep in a child's bedroom. Mr Correll had been giving her 'filthy looks' – apparently she'd said or done something to upset him. 'And he came in and he just pushed me back on the bed and he was like punching into me while I was on the bed,' she said. 'My sister knew that something was going to happen so she came up and knocked on the front door and that's the reason he stopped.' Another time, he was driving: 'He had a ring on, and I think it was a black stone, might've been onyx or something like that. And he punched me and it left a mark behind my ear for about a week. ' After a big fight, Mr Correll wouldn't speak to Elise for weeks, not a word, until she apologised. She likened Mr Correll's behaviour to exercises in 'suffering'. Twice she visited Mr Correll at car yards where he worked, to find him eating lunch with a young female employee or job applicant. Both times, she felt like she was interrupting her husband's flirting with the women, and left 'horrified' and 'shocked'. She said Mr Correll bought her first mobile phone so that he always knew where she was. He controlled the finances, she said, and told her how to wear her hair. He was 'very, very jealous'. They first met at a club where Mr Correll was a DJ. He swept the young mother 'off my feet'. She thought he was 'absolutely wonderful', as did her young children. 'He had them totally fooled as well,' she said. 'Then he showed his true colours there as well and I will never forgive him. He put a wedge between my kids and I that took a long time to mend.' LISTEN TO PODCAST BONUS INVESTIGATION UPDATE 2 BELOW: Elise met Mr Correll's family, whom she described as 'a very strange group of people'. He was one of 13 children; his brother Raymond came to be one of Australia's most reviled rapists. Elise tried to forget Mr Correll. But she had thought often over the years about Rachelle and her family. 'That poor girl, her parents, especially her mum, her sister,' she said. 'I'm a sister, I'm a mother, and if that had happened to someone I loved, I would want someone like me to come forward.' For more information about our investigation, visit If you have any tips or confidential information, please contact investigative journalist Ashlea Hansen at dearrachelle@ You can also join our Dear Rachelle podcast Facebook group. Originally published as Dear Rachelle investigation: Ex-wife's chilling details of key suspect in Rachelle Childs' murder
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
'C' is for copper: If it isn't still king, it remains a royal growth industry in Arizona
FIVE C's OF ARIZONA Origins| Climate| Citrus | Cotton | Copper (coming soon) | Cattle (coming soon) MORENCI, Ariz. — The night crew returned to the motel parking lot just after 7 a.m. and assembled the booze and the ashtrays on a wooden picnic table. Some of the traveling mine maintenance workers sipped brown liquor or vodka from plasticized paper coffee cups while others lined up cans of hard seltzer and Clamato-tinged light beer. It was mid-June, 10 days into the job, and the men were guzzling toward lights-out before the triple-digit heat baked eastern Arizona's copper belt, home of some of the most productive holes in North America. 'Nights are better in the heat,' said Bob Correll, grateful to be on the 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift instead of the other way around. His crew of specialized bricklayers from around the country was here on a two-week contract, relining a copper-leaching autoclave with fresh acid-resistant bricks. He described the machine as a big blender laid on its side, resembling a cylindrical semi-truck trailer, its purpose to churn and separate copper out of crushed rock. Correll and colleagues had built it about a decade before, and he returns occasionally to restore it. He was glad not to be laboring in its sweltering belly during the day. The workers are among legions who have made copper one of the linchpins in Arizona's economy since territorial days, one of the fabled Five C's along with cattle, cotton, climate and citrus. Although world economic cycles and shifting technologies such as the recent rise of electric vehicles make the copper sector anything but stable, it's a 'C' that continues to drive both rural economies and environmental consternation as the backbone of what the Arizona Mining Association pegs as a $20 billion mining industry. Correll's colleagues smoked and swilled drinks, chattering about their upcoming job at a Nevada mine, or the next one after that, in Papua New Guinea. A newer crew member said he wanted to accept that overseas assignment, but that his partner back home didn't want him going. 'Wait till she sees the check,' a coworker responded. The work is hard, Correll said, often with 12-hour shifts, seven days a week for a couple of weeks, followed by 20 days back home before the next job. On this assignment, they had enjoyed a 'fatigue day' off after the first six on, but Correll showed a swollen eye and scuffed temple as evidence that there was little real rest to be had. The wound had come when he tumbled down the levee behind the motel while tending a barbecue grill there. 'That's what happens on fatigue day,' he said. 'You drink and fall down. You don't get no rest.' The men form their own kind of family unit while away on a job, he said. In their home lives between jobs, though, readjusting to family life can be tough, and divorces are common. Correll, a grandparent, recently went through his own divorce back in Pocatello, Idaho. 'But we make a lot of money,' he said, 'so you've got a choice.' It's a choice that lures thousands of Arizonans to the copper fields, and that brings some to live full-time in the company town of Morenci or in private dwellings in its adjoining sister town of Clifton, where Correll's crew was staying at a no-frills motel with a parking lot full of work trucks. Copper is the color of money, from the coating on U.S. pennies to the greening of the global energy economy. Arizona produces three-quarters of America's copper, valued at around $6 billion a year, according to the University of Arizona's Lowell Institute for Mineral Resources. Morenci is the biggest haul of all in the state, and the biggest nationwide in many years. Freeport-McMoRan, the Phoenix-based company that runs it, employs 4,200 workers in Morenci alone. Their median pay last year was $85,700. Morenci also uses 1,500 contract workers. The mine has produced more than 43 billion pounds of copper since converting from underground to pit mining in 1937 and is estimated to hold at least 13 billion more — enough to operate through 2051. Statewide, the company says, it employs more than 10,000 people and generates $2.2 billion in direct economic activity. If copper isn't Arizona's king, it still looks to be a royal growth industry. Major new mines are in various stages of development or environmental haggling, all intended to exploit the metal's conductive properties to meet an expected world-changing demand wave as electrification fuels more of the world's transportation and energy needs. Electric vehicles, data centers, grid expansions and defense applications are expected to help boost world copper demand by up to 350% by 2050, Arizona Mining Association Director Steve Trussell said. So are Morenci and other copper deposits likely to remain among Arizona's keystone moneymakers? Just in the next decade, Freeport-McMoRan CEO Kathleen L. Quirk told The Arizona Republic in a written statement, the new demand will equal the output of the world's eight largest copper mines. 'Yes, copper is still a core part of Arizona's economy,' Quirk said, 'both now and in the future.' The night crew members started trickling away from the picnic table around 7:45 a.m. By 8, the sun blazed against the canyon wall across the street, where a locomotive hauling chemicals up to the mine would soon be blasting its horn and rumbling the ground under their beds. Later it would rumble back down-canyon. 'See you guys,' one of the men shouted down from the motel balcony. 'Good night.' Mining in Arizona: In the 'Copper State,' growing demand for ore raises fears in the fragile Sky Islands Pit mining for copper profoundly alters the landscape. At Morenci, it's on a scale that's hard to imagine without standing before it. From a distance, the rising dust resembles smoke from a wildfire in the surrounding mountains. From a roadside viewing platform above a pit, the source becomes clear as a drill rig bores into a hillside to make way for explosives that bust up the ore. Morenci workers drill 400 of them a day. Rock and gravel slide down the cut banks, sending dust skyward. Giant loaders dig into the rubble and pile it onto massive dump trucks that can hold 240 tons apiece or the weight of 53 full-size pickups. The same thing happens in four active pits. The trucks line up in convoys that ferry hundreds of loads each day to a conveyor belt that moves it across a public highway and then piles it next to the factories where it is further ground and stripped with chemicals. The resulting copper grains are either shipped to a smelter in Miami-Globe or mixed into a solution where days of electrolysis in a local plant will cause the metal to glom onto a steel plate and create a cathode, a 99.9% pure copper shingle that's 3.5 feet by 3.1 feet and weighs 80 pounds, ready for sale to mills that shape them into rods and then wires. The whole awesome mess, from pit to plant to pile of pulverized waste rock, covers 80 square miles, a footprint twice the size of the Phoenix suburb that hosts Arizona State University, Tempe. Since the formerly underground mine daylighted in 1937, its operations have moved mountains — and much of the company town itself. Arizona's and America's continuing drive for minerals and money are signs of a sickness that is disrupting more basic needs, according to Wendsler Nosie, a San Carlos Apache activist who has essentially relocated his life to a camper at Oak Flat, a site that another copper company has targeted for mining. Oak Flat, a scrubby expanse of boulders and ridges east of Superior on metro Phoenix's eastern shoulder, is the site of springs that bring life to the desert. It's also a sacred site for Apaches, one where Nosie says God touched the Earth and placed guiding spirits, much like angels in the Bible. Resolution Copper proposes to mine under it, where the land would eventually subside to leave a crater 2 miles in diameter. No amount of money, from the company or the government, could then restore the land or the aquifer under it, he said. It's why he has become the public face of a religious freedom case that seeks a U.S. Supreme Court ruling to protect Oak Flat. Mining issues: New Arizona mines unearth new conflicts: Resist climate change or protect fragile landscapes? He considers large copper mines and the 'greed' that drives them as self-inflicted wounds by a country that doesn't value air, water, land and wildlife as highly as 'critical minerals,' he said. 'We see America destroying all the places that give life,' Nosie said. Digging more minerals for the sake of electrifying the economy to ostensibly ameliorate climate change won't actually solve Americans' problems, he argued. Their increasing reliance on computers, smartphones and anything that needs batteries or circuitry only compounds the demand. 'As long as you continue to be greedy for more and more power, they won't stop,' Nosie said. 'All you have to do is realize we have enough.' Trussell, of the Arizona Mining Association, applies a different metric in advocating for more Arizona copper: security. 'The U.S. should strive for mineral independence,' he told The Republic. 'Just as we should not outsource our food production, we should aim to minimize our reliance on foreign minerals. This approach not only strengthens our economy but also ensures that we maintain control over the environmental and social standards of our mining operations.' At Morenci, historic operations led to wildlife habitat losses, and air and water pollution around the San Francisco River caused the state and federal governments to sue Freeport-McMoRan for environmental damages. Much of the contamination had come from previously dismantled smelters and underground operations that Phelps Dodge Corp. and its predecessors had operated before Freeport-McMoRan acquired that company and its mine in 2007. The lawsuit also pointed to a continuing threat from acidic water pooling on the mine's massive tailings pond. The complaint alleged that wildlife including migratory birds had been injured. The company settled that lawsuit for $6.8 million, a small sum compared to billions in revenue. 'Mining has long been, and continues to be, an important part of Arizona's history and economy,' Acting U.S. Attorney for Arizona Ann Birmingham Scheel said when announcing that settlement in 2012. 'Likewise, protecting Arizona's environment has long been, and continues to be, a priority for the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Department of Justice. This settlement strikes a balance between mining and protecting the environment and will allow the natural resources trustees to focus on restoration efforts rather than on litigation.' The company told The Republic it now has 'extensive water management systems and other controls to prevent impacts from its operations to the San Francisco River.' The tailings pile, and much of the rest of the mine have a spider web of pipes that move and recirculate water for dust suppression, processing and other operations. The company says it recycles 90% of its water for multiple passes through the system. When it needs more, it draws on sources including the Salt River Project, local surface and groundwater sources, and the Colorado River via the Central Arizona Project. Before federal environmental controls like the Clean Water Act were enacted starting in the 1970s, locals recall, electric blue water would flow downhill from the mine and pool in Clifton lots. Josephine Lunt recalled playing with a cousin in that water, immersing rocks in it and waiting for them to change color like Easter eggs in dye. 'I'm 93,' she said, 'so it must've not been too bad.' Lunt still lives in her family home, a widow after 66 years of marriage to Donald Lunt, a welder who worked up to foreman. She displays a locally produced copper bowl in her living room, dedicated by the company to her husband for lifelong support of mining. Both of them grew up here in mining families, and she returned after graduating from the University of Arizona to teach music in the schools. The mine has given a good life to many, even if it was at the cost of degrading the mountains and forcing beloved Morenci neighbors to move out of the way, she said. 'Our landscape is gone, but you can still go up the Coronado Trail,' she said, referring to the mule train route that explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado's expedition followed in 1540 when searching for fabled cities of gold. It's now a steep stretch of U.S. Highway 191 that winds past the pits and up ridges toward the Blue Range, with sweeping views of the Rim Country and back across the desert toward towering Mount Graham. She spoke of progress and earthmoving in terms of equating the changes to a rising sea. 'It's a livelihood, and I know that. It's just that you have to adjust to the tide.' Lunt has seen a lot of adjustments in both Morenci, where she plays piano at Holy Cross Catholic Church, and in Clifton, where she lives. Two of the hardest knocks came in 1983. First, mine workers struck against Phelps Dodge after a copper price collapse that had caused the company to rein in labor costs. Her husband worked through the strife, but stayed nights at the mine to avoid hostile strikers. From her porch at the time, she watched National Guard troops riding up the hill toward Morenci in troop trucks, called out by then-Gov. Bruce Babbitt. 'I never thought I'd see that coming through Clifton,' she said. 'It was a sad time.' Eventually, the company broke the strike, and over time people either left or went back to work without union representation. It caused rifts, Lunt said. 'They're still divided, the families.' Those who didn't go back had to leave their company housing in Morenci, and some settled downhill in Clifton. That same summer, the San Francisco flooded, wiping out homes and businesses and chasing many residents off to Safford or other communities. But many of Lunt's lifelong friends remained, and she has resisted requests to join her daughter's family in Tucson. She said she relishes meeting 'handsome young men' who she taught during her career, and telling them that she can remember when they wet their pants. 'There's a special friendship in the area,' she said. 'I've had a wonderful, wonderful life. What would I do in Tucson?' Just downhill from Lunt's house is Chase Creek, a street that can double as an actual creek when monsoon rains fall. Like historic main drags in other Arizona mining towns, Chase Creek features curbs that rise a few feet from street to sidewalk, effectively forming a funnel for floodwaters and serving as a reminder that much of the infrastructure here, at the mine or in town, is in a floodplain hemmed by cliffs. Down Chase Creek is where Lunt's friend Tammie McWhinney greets visitors in an old brick storefront that serves as the Greenlee County Museum. She's 81 and has lived in Morenci and Clifton since age 4. McWhinney hands out coloring books featuring local scenes and trivia, including about how the twin towns of Clifton-Morenci boasted 18,000 residents in 1910 and rivaled Tucson to be the largest community in Arizona at that time. Such was copper's dominance just before statehood. These days, the county that the two towns anchor is home to about half that many. The industry is humming along, McWhinney and a museum colleague said, but it's more automated and needs fewer workers. Many of those workers have families who prefer the larger town of Safford, with its Walmart and restaurants, and they commute 47 miles from there. The museum displays mining equipment and one of the cathode plates of copper. It features a contour map showing the layout of copper tunnels from before pit mining started, and it has an extensive catalog of historic photos. Some of the monochrome shots show long-gone Morenci neighborhoods, like a terraced one called Stargo where McWhinney's family lived during her youth before moving to make way for a pit that's now producing. Others show buildings that came and went in rapid succession, including a school. The current site of Clifton's Circle K convenience store had hosted a smelter before the Clean Air Act made their smokestacks problematic in this narrow valley, she said. She recalled school days when everyone knew what time to expect a belch of smoke to drift in through windows that remained open for lack of air conditioning. 'We were prepared for the smoke,' she said. And what did they do about it? 'Just cough.' The Clean Air Act plagued the community until the company came up with a smelter-free process for much of its ore, McWhinney said. 'It put a lot of people out of work,' she said. 'Then when we got the SX plant, they went back to work.' That would be the SX/EW plant, short for Solvent Extraction-Electrowinning. At the SX/EW plant today, steel plates hang in rows, suspended for a week in an acidic solution containing impure copper. During that time an electrical current causes the dissolved copper ions to migrate onto the steel plates, which they coat to a depth of about a quarter-inch. At that point, a worker manipulating an overhead crane lifts them and delivers them above two others who are wearing protective suits and masks as they wield steel bars to scrape away and collect any impure copper nuggets clinging to the cathode plates. An airway-stinging acid mist wafts along behind the plates as the workers load them into an automated line that jostles them until the two copper sides loosen from the steel host then drops a wedge to split them off and stack them for shipping. Morenci is a Freeport-McMoRan property where the company controls all of the housing and many of the services while sharing some responsibilities, such as public health, with Greenlee County. The company leases property to businesses such as a Basha's supermarket and a few eateries and runs its own bowling alley. It built a modern recreation center with gym, jogging track, pools and water play features for employees and their families. These amenities help attract and retain employees in a remote part of the state, according to the company, while giving them a sense of camaraderie and pride in the community and the company. The biggest enticement of all may be the homes and apartments, with a sliding scale for rent based on when a worker started and moved in. Freeport-McMoRan maintains 1,949 housing units in Morenci and 42 in Safford. The company also provides a $750 housing stipend for those living in private homes elsewhere. Estevan Mesa is a mine worker who has taken full advantage of the Morenci housing program. After a brief stint playing baseball at Eastern Arizona College in Safford, he went to work driving ore trucks when his wife was pregnant. After seven months of that, he apprenticed as a diesel mechanic and now works on the mine's heavy equipment. It's a trade that makes him feel secure in his future, even if copper prices fall and the mine cuts jobs. 'Having a trade like that could possibly take me to other places if I need to,' he said. Until then, though, the tug of his Morenci rent is strong. His family pays just $200 a month, the same as when he signed on. Life is good in Morenci, Mesa said. In June, he was coaching Estevan, Jr.'s, Little League all-star team, preparing them for a district tournament. He enjoys the mountains of eastern Arizona as a hunter and angler. He volunteers as a firefighter, and he's glad to be around generations of mining families, including his own. 'It feels secure,' he said. 'Everybody knows everybody.' The work is always top of mind, from the scarps and rock piles visible around town to the assistant coaches who show up in high-visibility coveralls because they're on call. The mine operates 24/7, 365 days a year. Administrative and town employees work four weekly shifts of 10 hours, but many mine workers put in 12-hour shifts for a week at a time, totaling 14 out of every 28 days. Derek Waltrip, 24, showed up to help with his nephew's practice on Mesa's team after coming off his shift at 4 p.m. and remained on call for the evening. He started as a laborer at 18 and now works as a mechanic on the SX/EX plant. 'It's not bad," he said. "Money's where it's at up here.' He hopes to stay at it. 'I got a little boy," he said. "I want him to graduate up here. Just depends. You never know. Freeport could shut down right now and everybody's gotta go.' The housing situation down the hill in Clifton is different, and something of a challenge, Mayor Laura Dorrell said. People who have moved away cling to family homes that might otherwise be open to newcomers, entrepreneurs or mine workers. Some homes on the canyon sides appear abandoned and dilapidated. Those canyon walls make it hard to secure land to build new places. Likewise, a number of absentee commercial property owners cling to attractive buildings along Chase Creek, a place where newcomers might set up shop if they could. The town has two thriving, taxpaying marijuana dispensaries — almost as many as its restaurants. Property taxes are low, and people don't sell to make way for something new. It gives many young people no option but to leave town unless they want to follow their parents to work in the mine. Dorrell herself grew up here and returned from the University of Arizona as a nurse, and married a mine electrician. But she has seen many young graduates scatter for good. 'We need to really work hard to encourage our kids to come back here and have a reason for them to return once they go to school,' she said. Meantime, copper remains Greenlee County's calling card. As the sun went down on Chase Creek, late enough for Correll's crew of traveling bricklayers to have left the motel and returned to work, several laborers coming off their own shift pulled up in a parking lot and unloaded a couple of iced-down boxes of Modelo beers for an evening's chat. A few of them declined interviews. One, who called himself Eddie but didn't want to be identified for fear of running afoul of his new employers at the mine, said he was grateful to be here. Eddie had just arrived from El Paso, Texas, where he had worked in a restaurant kitchen and struggled to support kids aged 16, 14 and 8. He missed them and wasn't sure when he'd see them, but he was thinking of staying on at the mine. The work — shoveling sludge out of ball mills in which baseball-size bearings pulverize rock dust — hurt his back but paid four times what he had made back home. He felt at once small and energized by the opportunity here. 'This place is humongous,' he said. 'I feel like an ant.' Brandon Loomis covers environmental and climate issues for The Arizona Republic and Reach him at Environmental coverage on and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Sign up for AZ Climate, our weekly environment newsletter, and follow The Republic environmental reporting team at and @azcenvironment on Facebook and Instagram. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: As demand for copper remains high, mining still drives economy
