More than 100 years of history are baked into the walls, including notoriety as the holder of Arizona’s longest continuous liquor license. This 1930s-era establishment stands out for the 1800s attire the bartenders sport. 5 miles north of Parker off AZ-95 at Cienega Springs Road, This multi-building saloon is a sprawling compound on the site of an old mining town. Nellie E Saloon aka The Desert Bar, Parker Probably a wise idea, since the only way out of town is via the hairpin turns of Oatman Highway. Only beer and wine – no hard stuff – served. Raise a glass in the Bradshaw Mountains, where this 112-year-old bar is perched. The dusty, out-of-the-way saloon is a critical part of the ghost town mystique – an amiable, anonymous place to hunker down over a frosty brew. For ghost towns in quotation marks, see next page. Both are great, but we’re biasing the following pages in favor of real ghost towns. We see a fine but important distinction between bona fide ghost towns and “ghost towns.” The former applies strictly to abandoned settlements, while the latter includes well-trafficked towns that make PR hay from haunted hotel rooms and other tourist-pleasing conceits. Located up-mountain of Portal in the Coronado National Forest near the New Mexico border, this one-time mining town survived both the collapse of its mining industry and the 2011 Horseshoe2 Fire. Only a handful of families – and a rattlesnake products store – remain in this one-time copper boomtown east of Tombstone on the slopes of the Dragoon Mountains. Marooned on the far side of the Santa Catalinas opposite Tucson, this blink-and-you-miss-it farming village sported “only a few inhabited adobe homes” a decade ago, according to. When completed, the I-11 freeway connecting Vegas to the Valley will bypass Wikieup. If you’ve driven to Las Vegas from the Valley, you’ve driven through this tiny hiccup of a town on SR- 93 – and therein lies the problem. Can Mother Road-loving Euros keep it going? Originally settled by Spanish Basque immigrants, this micro-settlement north of Show Low is one stiff recession or non-procreating only child away from winking out of existence.Ī single family, the Griggs, kept this Northern Arizona town upright through six generations of mining collapse and freeway bypassing. Which barely hanging on Arizona towns are most likely to join the ranks of ghost towns in the next 50 years? It’s not terribly remote, but the excitingly craggy Dragoon Mountains are nearby, along with the many wonderful wineries of the Sulphur Springs Valley. Not every ghost town has its own website and caretaker, but with 25 buildings, the Santa Cruz County town gives ruin-porn addicts much to admire Located at 7,200 feet in the Huachuca Mountains near the Mexican border, it requires a hairy drive on a one-lane switchback. Largely functioning structures, some or all of which have been converted into museums or tourist attractions has a full-time population, but much smaller than in peak years of operation.Īpproximate number of places in Arizona that meet the minimum criteria for a ghost town in Arizona. May have standing houses or buildings, but all or most are abandoned no population.īuilding or houses are still standing, and a few residents may remain. Little more than rubble remains, and sometimes dilapidated, roofless buildings. Site no longer exists in any tangible way, with the possible exception of hidden foundations and footings. Generally, preservationists use the following terms to classify ghost towns: In this salute to Arizona’s bonanza of abandoned places, we’ll introduce you to the dark, the dangerous, the charming, the odd and the once vibrant spots whose borders and buildings hold the secret history of our state’s hardscrabble past. Other ghost towns are faded relics of Route 66 tourist attractions, left and forgotten as motorists opted for faster, more convenient byways. In Arizona, many of our ghost towns were once mining camps built in the 1800s by fortune hunters who sought the state’s most remote outposts at which to pick and ax their way to riches. The stories of how, why and who are where things get interesting. It’s been abandoned, and all that remains is the crumbling detritus of the past. If you were to judge by TripAdvisor reviews, visiting a ghost town is a lot of “nothing to do” and “just old buildings on the side of a road.” Well, of course.
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