Clemenceau is a neighborhood of the city of Cottonwood in Yavapai County. It was built as a company town in 1917 to serve the new smelter for James Douglas, Jr.'s United Verde Extension Mine (UVX) in Jerome. The town was originally named Verde after the mine, but it was changed to Clemenceau in 1920 in honor of the French premier in World War I, Georges Clemenceau, a personal friend of Douglas. Clemenceau would later leave a vase designed by the French potter Ernest Chaplet to the town in return. The smelter town had homes for workers, a school, post office, bank, and a clubhouse, and its population varied between 1,000 and 5,000. To deliver ore to the smelter from Jerome, Douglas built the Arizona-Extension Railway, a two-branch shortline railroad. The western branch ran between Clemenceau and the eastern portal of the 2.5-mile Josephine Tunnel, which connected to the UVX Mine. The eastern branch ran between Clemenceau and Clarkdale. The Clemenceau smelter closed in 1937. Most residents then left the area. When Cottonwood was incorporated in 1960, Clemenceau and the Clemenceau Airport were included in its boundaries. With the exception of the school, the bank/post office and the smelter slag pile, little remains of the original town of Clemenceau. A largely invisible remnant is the Clemenceau Water Company, which still serves the area of the old town of Clemenceau. The town of Cottonwood bought the company in 2004, but it still operates as a separate entity, as of 2006.