Map of Globe, Arizona in 2026

In Western Apache, Globe is Bésh Baa Gowąh, “Place of Metal,” and the town began in 1875 as a mining camp. This map prints the Globe Downtown Historic District with the Elks Building, the Gila Valley Bank and Trust Building and Holy Angels Church, and the shaded land around town carries Copper Gulch, Hayes Gulch and Icehouse Canyon.

Globe is the county seat of Gila County, in the valley of Pinal Creek in the southern part of the county.

KNOWOL made this map in 2026 and gave it the look of an old atlas. The shaded relief of the landscape comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the streets were drawn from Census Bureau files. Historic sites such as the Elks Building, the Globe Downtown Historic District and the Gila Valley Bank and Trust Building were checked against National Park Service and National Register of Historic Places records. The city covers 18.2 square miles, the town of Miami is 6 miles west of downtown, and 7,249 people lived here at the 2020 census.

Silver, then copper

Long before the mining camp, the Salado people lived at Besh-Ba-Gowah, about a mile south of today’s town, between AD 1225 and AD 1400. The pueblo has been reconstructed, with an archaeological museum beside it. In 1875 prospectors found silver on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, including an unusual nugget shaped like a globe, and that year the mining camp at Ramboz Peak moved to what became Globe. Plans for an incorporated town were drawn up in July 1876, and Globe’s first newspaper published its first issue on May 2, 1878. By February 1881 Globe was the county seat, with a stagecoach line to Silver City, New Mexico.

The silver began to give out within four years, but by then copper had been found. The Old Dominion Mining Company was incorporated in 1880, the railroad arrived in 1898, and in 1904 Phelps Dodge took over the mine and spent $2.5 million expanding and modernizing it from 1904 to 1908. In the 1900s the Old Dominion Copper Company ranked as one of the world’s richest. It closed for good in 1931, after producing some 800 million pounds of copper, and it had been the mainstay of Globe’s economy for most of that half century. Since 1941 the old mine has supplied water to the area.

Downtown Globe

The Globe Downtown Historic District went on the National Register in 1987. It gathers the commercial, church and government buildings that made Globe the center of Gila County, from three prominent churches to the Globe Post Office and Courthouse, and its period of significance runs from 1880 to 1935, the years of the town’s main growth. The Elks Building, a three-story Romanesque hall built in 1910, served the Elks lodge and also as a theater, and Globe’s own page calls it “the tallest three-story building in the world.” The Gila Valley Bank and Trust Building of 1909 was the bank’s fourth branch and its first outside Graham and Greenlee Counties. Designed by Chicago architects, it shows the first known use of glazed terra cotta in Arizona on its outside walls, and it’s the only Neoclassical building in Globe. The bank later became Valley National Bank, and that name still reads across the top.

Holy Angels Church is a story of a whole parish. Father Virgil Genevrier, a priest born and educated in France, came to Globe in 1915 and decided the old wood-frame church should be replaced. He hired James S. Pigott, an architect from Newark, New Jersey, acted as the contractor himself, and according to his parish account book most of the craftsmen who cut the tufa stone and put up the building were members of the parish. Its stained glass windows are by Emil Frei, one of the most influential stained glass artists in the United States in the early decades of the 20th century, and its three bells were cast in 1918. The old Gila County Courthouse is now the Cobre Valley Center for the Arts.

The governors’ town

George W. P. Hunt arrived in Globe with two burros, needing a job. He waited tables at the Pasco Café, worked as a mucker and a ranch hand, then clerked at a general store, and he rose to president of the Old Dominion Commercial Company. Globe stayed his home for the rest of his life, and he became Arizona’s first governor and served seven terms. Rose Mofford was born Rose Perica in Globe in 1922, the youngest of six children of Croatian immigrants. She was the first female class president at Globe High School and graduated as valedictorian in 1939, and she went on to become Arizona’s first woman secretary of state and its first woman governor.

Sarah Herring Sorin, Arizona’s first woman attorney, moved her practice to Globe in 1912 and was counsel for the Old Dominion Copper Company and United Globe Mines. On November 6, 1913, in Work v. United Globe Mines, she became the first woman to argue a case before the US Supreme Court with no male attorney beside her, and she won. The tennis player Helen Jacobs, born in Globe in 1908, won nine Grand Slam titles and was ranked No. 1 in singles in 1936 by A. Wallis Myers.

Globe High School first played Miami in football in 1924. The rivalry led to the “G” and “M” hills in each town in 1934 and to the Copper Kettle trophy, cast in 1947. The Globe Unified School District also runs Copper Rim Elementary School and High Desert Middle School, and both have their places on the sheet.

This Globe map is a good addition to an office, library or den, and it can help teach children the geography and history of the area. It’s made for anyone who calls Globe home, and KNOWOL created it in 2026 to show the city as it looks today. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the Globe map.

Sources

• Globe, Arizona, Wikipedia
• Globe Downtown Historic District, Wikipedia
• Elks Building (Globe, Arizona), Wikipedia
• Gila Valley Bank and Trust Building, Wikipedia
• Holy Angels Church (Globe, Arizona), Wikipedia
• Gila County Courthouse, Wikipedia
• Globe High School, Wikipedia
• George W. P. Hunt, Wikipedia
• Rose Mofford, Wikipedia
• Sarah Herring Sorin, Wikipedia
• Helen Jacobs, Wikipedia