The story
Sasco was never a mining town — it was where the ore went to be melted. The name is an acronym for the Southern Arizona Smelting Company, formed in 1906 to smelt copper from the Silver Bell mines and other nearby workings. The smelter was finished in 1908, and a company town of about 600 people grew around it, with stores, saloons, and the two-story Hotel Rockland.
The town's life was short and unlucky. The parent Development Company of America went bankrupt around 1911, closing the smelter the first time; ASARCO reopened it in 1915, but the Spanish flu tore through Sasco in the winter of 1918–19. By the early 1920s the smelter was dismantled and the town was empty.
What remains today
The smelter stack and slag, the stone jail, the Hotel Rockland's walls, stamp-mill foundations, and old railroad platforms — a large, walkable field of ruins.
Questions from the field
- What does the name Sasco mean?
- It's an acronym for the Southern Arizona Smelting Company, which built the town's copper smelter in 1907–08. Sasco processed ore from surrounding mines rather than digging any of its own.
- Do you need a permit to visit Sasco?
- The ruins are on Arizona State Trust land, which legally requires an inexpensive recreational-use permit to enter. The access roads are unpaved and there are no services, so plan for heat and carry water.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Sasco — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Sasco's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Primary sources for this record
- — Wikipedia — Sasco, Arizona (coordinates and history)
- — Arizona Daily Star — 'Sasco had short life as smelter town'
- — Pinal County historical accounts — Southern Arizona Smelting Company