Burros and Gold

On the shoulder of busy I-40,
a fierce wildflower thrives

Crossing the Colorado River into Arizona, I had to ride on the narrow shoulder of I-40.  There’s no stopping on the bridge—not for cars.  So if you’ve ever been that way and wanted to stop, here’s what you might have seen . 

I left I-40 after the bridge, heading up a long, sometimes steep, grade on Route66 to Oatman.  Back in the thirties, migrants to California from the Dust Bowl often hired local drivers to wrangle their jalopies over the steep, twisty road.  Bicyclists have told me that this day will be the hardest of the entire trek to Chicago. 

That white spire is a plug of nearly white
 rhyolite that was thrust up through Alcyone trachyte.

There was gold in these Black Mountains of Arizona, and probably still is.  But the mines are closed now and the town of Oatman has gone from 3,500 people to just enough to meet tourists’ whims.  On the last steep hill into town I passed where the Tom Reed Mine stood in 1952 where it began in 1912. (picture at the Oatman Museum).  

Residents of Oatman no longer mine gold, but rather the pockets of tourists.  The town is lousy with busloads from Laughlan, Nevada, and a few travelers of Historic Route 66.  Otherwise it’s a nice town to visit. 

The Oatman Hotel no longer provides rooms with creaky floors and a bathroom down the hall, as it used to.  But you can still sit at the bar and write something on a dollar bill and pin it to the wall. 

I wondered how many customers paid their bar bills with written-on ones, but they must not have exceeded the number who pinned up bills.  All the walls and ceiling are several layers deep in money.

I left memories of miners, the burros they turned loose as the left, and the tourists soaking in old times, and headed up another long steep grade to Sitgreaves Pass.

It’s humiliating to give up riding at 3mph admitting it’s too hard, getting off the bike and pushing it up the hill at 2mph, but that’s what I did for the last two miles.  This was the high point, there would be only one more 1,000-foot climb, and I would be in Kingman.

How many of you have had your tank filled from a pump like these.  I’d really like to know.  I was out-of-gas at this point, and finally rode into Kingman with the lights on.