I work in mining as well as gas and oil in the Rockies from AZ to CO and NV, so I travel a lot and have a great interest in all things old. I went to school in Helena, MT, and my love for days of mining past started in the gold mines around there.
I know the post is old, but the great thing about message boards is that the questions never really die.
To get to your point, the Morenci / Clifton area was all shaft and stope at least 50 mines total, from the 1880's until the advent of technology to process low grade oxide ores and more recently sulfide ores. At the behest of the government, Morenci converted to high volume pit prodution around the beginning of WWII. A few miles north of the concentrator / mill right on the 191 just across from the haul truck assembly / tear down yard is the Mexican cemetery. The most recent grave is from the 30's. South of there on mine property disappearing under leach piles is the Chinese cemetery. The old town of Morenci is on mine property and has the white cemetery and what is left of the town. Phelps Dodge was about as powerful as the government in AZ at one time, and bought out or took everything in the area. The pit has swallowed up the small towns and most of the mines in the district. There are a few not on mine property to the north and east, but that is about it. At the risk of my job, I have spent some time exploring a few of the remaining workings which are on the north and west side of the mine property, away from most of the work. We just finished core drilling Sun Ridge which has four tunnels I have not been in, but the drilling and blasting has begun tearing this high grade target down, and I may not get back to work there until they are long buried. I have some hand tools, bits of dynamite fuse, interesting bits of crystal and ore, and other odds and ends I carry out with me as a connection to the past. I share my geologic and archeologic finds with my kids in hopes they develop some of the same sort of connection.
I deliberately take the long / different way home when I travel and spend a fair amount of time off road just scouting. People have no idea of the staggering amount of mining in the West at the turn of the last century. Nevada prepared a survey of historical and active workings, pits, shafts, adits, prospects, etc. as preparation for closing the most dangerous of them. The number was in the hundreds of thousands.
http://minerals.state.nv.us/forms/aml/a ... 090330.pdf
There are many dozens of ghost towns and sites. Arizona and western New Mexico, central Utah and Colorado are no different.
Good luck and be careful