Apex, Arizona and the Myth of the Company Town in the American West

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "What We Make of the West: Historical Archaeologists Versus Frontier Mythologies", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Company Towns are intrinsically linked to the labor of the American West. Yet such locations are invariably idealized by the industries that created them and villainized by the laborers exploited by them, as company towns both provided resources for their residents and controlled choices. Using Apex, Arizona, a 1920s-1930s logging camp, this paper will tackle the stereotypes and myths surrounding the role of company towns through an examination of how the Saginaw and Manistee Lumber Company divided space, reacted to Prohibition, and stocked the company store.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• What We Make of the West: Historical Archaeologists Versus Frontier Mythologies

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow