Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Jerome, AZ

Jerome is an incorporated town in the Black Hills of Yavapai County, Arizona, built on Cleopatra Hill overlooking the Verde Valley along State Route 89A between Sedona and Prescott, roughly 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Phoenix.

The first copper-mining claims at the site were filed in 1876, and the mining camp was named for Eugene Jerome, a New York financier who became secretary of the United Verde Copper Company when it was organized in 1883.

After four major fires between 1894 and 1898 destroyed much of the business district and half the community's homes, Jerome was incorporated as a town in 1899, and local merchant and rancher William Munds served as its first mayor.

Jerome's United Verde Mine, developed by Montana copper magnate William A. Clark, became the leading copper producer in the Arizona Territory, and over its 77-year life from 1876 to 1953 it produced nearly 33 million tons of copper, gold, silver, lead, and zinc ore.

Together, the United Verde and the neighboring United Verde Extension (UVX) Mine of James S. Douglas Jr. worked copper deposits that geologists have called among the richest ever found, with metals said to be worth more than $1 billion.

In its 1920s heyday Jerome was home to more than 10,000 people, and in 1903 New York's Sun newspaper proclaimed it "the wickedest town in the West."

Jerome made national news in 1917 when about 60 members of the Industrial Workers of the World were expelled at gunpoint during labor unrest, loaded onto a cattle car, and shipped west out of town.

When the mines closed for good in 1953, Jerome's population collapsed, falling from 4,932 in the 1930 census to just 243 by 1960, and the town nearly became a ghost town.

Jerome was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1967, and its surviving residents rebuilt the economy around tourism and retail.

The 2020 census counted 464 people in Jerome; in the 2010 census, its 444 residents lived in 253 households.