Kearny, AZ

Kearny is a planned copper town along Arizona 177 in the Copper Basin, near the Gila River. Its name reaches back to General Stephen Watts Kearny, who passed through the area in 1846, but the present town is a 1950s creation. Kennecott built Kearny as the expanding Ray open-pit mine displaced the older communities of Ray, Sonora, and Barcelona; some houses were moved down the road, and new homes went up for mine workers. That history gives Kearny an unusual layout and a strong connection to the mine, Hayden Smelter, and nearby sister towns. The local shorthand is desert river, copper, and a town built around relocation.