Wild West Trip, Day 2: Rt. 66 in Western Arizona

We left Vegas Friday morning and drove down 93, crossing the Hoover Dam along the way. That was impressive. We’re going to tour it on our way back to Vegas.

Then it was a 1.5 hr ride to Kingman, Arizona, where we hopped on to Rt. 66 and headed West toward Oatman. This stretch of Rt. 66 to Oatman is adventurous, to say the least. There are wide-open spaces that last for miles, with buttes and rock mountains lining the desert valleys.

As you get nearer to Oatman, the Black Mountains loom large in the distance as you drive across the desert floor. They continue to grow in stature, and then all at once, you are ascending them on a winding road the likes of which I have never driven before.

There are so many switchbacks that you begin to feel like you’re going nowhere in a hurry. The steep drop-offs from the road to the valley below are mostly exposed, with no guard rails and I would not have wanted to be the one in the passenger seat, having to trust the driver.

On the way up, we stopped at Fishbowl Springs, where there are rock steps cut into the side of the mountain, close to the road. At the top of the stairs is a spring that used to be the only source of water for weary Rt. 66 travelers for many, many miles. Back then, the vehicles would routinely break down trying to make the difficult climb up the mountain, so this spring may have saved many lives. A bowl has been fashioned out of the rock w/concrete to catch the spring water and make it easier to dip your canteen into.

When you get to the top of the long climb in your vehicle, you will find yourself crossing Sitgreaves Pass where you can pull off and look back down into the miles of open valley, glimpsing traces of the old Beale Wagon Road trail hugging the left hillside. It’s barely there, but you can make it out.

Then it’s a slow descent back down the other side of the mountains, where we found this car (picture below), which apparently didn’t fare as well as we had. It’s also obviously been there for many years. Enlarge the picture to see what looks like a pile of rocks at the top left of the car. That is actually the edge of the road which we had just driven from and he apparently decided to take a shortcut.

We arrived in “ghost town” of Oatman, AZ, This town was booming during the gold rush and early on in Rt. 66’s history. Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent their wedding night here in the Oatman Hotel in 1939. The town became deserted when the mines stopped producing. The miners left behind their burros, which have actually thrived in the wild, so now the town is also famous for it’s wild burrows wandering around where they please. There are now performers who are there during the day, as it has become a tourist attraction. We spent a couple of hours there, watching the gunfights, touring the old buildings that are still standing from when it was just a ghost town, feeding the wild burrows.

Oatman is a great place to spend an afternoon, especially if you have kids.

We then headed back the way we came, over the mountains and through the deserts until we happened upon the restored historic Cool Springs Filling Station (1st picture below). We kept going, touring through Hackberry General Store (2nd picture below), and finished up by spending the night at the Rt. 66 Motel in Seligman, AZ. More about that in my next post.