A great place to begin your exploration of Clifton is at Greenlee Historical Museum. The museum has an impressive collection of Indian artifacts as well as turn-of-the-century clothing, housewares and old photographs. The mining exhibit includes a 1915 geological relief model of the area that shows the location of the old Morenci and Metcalf, now long since buried by the Freeport-McMoran copper mine.

One of the most interesting displays is the so-called "Eastside Murals". Before the Flood of 1983, the museum was located on the opposite side of the San Francisco River. When the adjacent building, the old H.A. Elliott home, was demolished, eight exquisitely hand-painted murals were discovered beneath the plastered walls. Apparently the rear room of the home served as a card or smoking room for friends of Mr. Elliott. A subsequent owner, Mr. Stanton, who was the high school principal, deemed them a bit too risqué and covered them with a thick coat of plaster. Were the murals painted by Mr. Elliott's guests, or by a mysterious local artist using the moniker, "Cui Bono" ("to whom is it a benefit")? The largest of the murals is more than 12 feet wide. They were reassembled and relocated to the museum under a grant from the Arizona Historical Society.

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When the mines first opened, mules were used to haul ore cars from the smelter to the mines in the mountains above Clifton. The mules then rode down as passengers on the cars that delivered ore via gravity to the Chase Creek smelter. The ore was deposited in bins that are still visible today, behind the Circle K in Clifton. Once a narrow gauge railroad was completed from the smelter to the mine, the mules were replaced with "baby gauge" locomotives — so-called because they ran on 20-inch-wide track instead of the the standard 36-inch-wide track. One of these locomotives, nicknamed "The Copper Head," was saved from the scrap heap by Tom Sidebotham, a former engineer on the Coronado Railroad. He rebuilt the engine from parts and donated it to the town of Clifton in 1937. You'll find the engine in the center of town, next to the old Clifton jail.