Boll Weevil Bell

The Boll Weevil Bell is a historic monument in Jerome, Arizona, a former copper-mining town now known as a preserved ghost town. The boll weevil was a beetle that devastated US cotton crops from the 1910s onward, and several Southern communities erected monuments to it — often with an ironic twist, crediting the pest with forcing farmers toward more diversified agriculture. How and why that history connects to Jerome is unclear from available records; the specific story behind this bell warrants verification on site.