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VULTURE CITY GHOST TOWN
by Richard Maack,
Arizona Highways Photography Editor
Saloon doors creak. Swirling dust devils dance along a
lonely street lined with boarded up storefronts. On a forsaken plain below a
range of mountains, a dying town provides the romantic backdrop for a lone
cowboy riding along the isolated settlement’s one main street. Tumbleweeds
scatter in the wind, and somewhere, off in the distance, a coyote howls.
The ghost town.
Or rather, Hollywood’s version of the ghost town as
popularized in the collective imagination through countless Western movies.
Like many romantic visions of the Old West, the reality of
ghost towns is much more prosaic, but often, no less dramatic.
For the most part, Arizona’s ghost towns are connected to
the state’s mining heritage. Where minerals were found and mines established,
towns sprang up. Sometimes the strikes were rich and towns nearby became
large and prosperous. Tombstone. Bisbee. Jerome. Other mining claims played
out quickly and the few ramshackle buildings attached to them vanished, often
without a trace.
Even the most successful mines eventually reach a point
where the expense of extracting their riches exceeds the possible monetary
return from the sale of the minerals. The mining claims that fueled Tombstone’s prosperity provide a classic example. Although plenty of silver still exists
under the town, the cost of wresting it from the ground became prohibitive
when groundwater flooded the mines in the late 1880s. Numerous attempts to
pump the water out were attempted and all failed. Losing the mines doomed Tombstone to a long slow decline and near-ghost town status before Old West legend and
tourism finally saved its economy.
Arizona’s ghost towns can be divided into two broad categories: those that
continue to maintain a human population, but have numerous ruined or historic
buildings inside their limits, or true ghost towns, generally completely
abandoned by their former residents and left to time and the elements. Each
provides great opportunities for photography.
Historic towns like Tombstone, Bisbee, Jerome and Clifton fall into the first category. All were near-ghost towns at one point or another
during their existence but have experienced a renaissance of sorts as
tourists discovered their historic charm.
The second category of ghost town, those abandoned
entirely by their former inhabitants, are judged primarily by one
criterion—“buildings under roof.”
Because one of the primary construction materials in
Territorial Arizona was adobe brick (essentially mud and straw formed into a
block and dried in the sun), when a building lost its roof, the adobe walls
would quickly break down. Adobe bricks exposed to the elements can melt away
almost entirely in just a few decades. However, adobe protected by a roof can
maintain structural soundness over a long period of time.
The number
of buildings still standing is important in judging the real “ghost town
experience.” After all, a ghost town should still look something like a
“town.” There are very few uninhabited ghost towns left in the American West
with large numbers of buildings still under roof. Arizona is lucky to have
two of the best, Vulture City near Wickenburg, and Ruby, southwest of Tucson.
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