Oatman, Arizona
Earlier in March, my parents and my son had been following my Wife’s choir tour to the Grand Canyon. On our return home we decided to make a stop over at Oatman, Arizona.
My wife and I have been there before on our waterskiing summers at Lake Mojave about 15 miles away north of Laughlin. We had been there when it was 100+ degrees during an egg frying competition on the street. The weather this time was much different. It was cold!
We had to split the drive up so Skyler had a chance to get out and stretch his legs on the 6-7 hour drive. The following is what was on the sign as we entered Oatman from Kingman on the east side.
“OATMAN, ARIZONA ELEVATION 2700 FEET
Oatman was founded about 1906. By 1931 the area’s mines had produced 1.8 million ounces of gold. By the mid 1930′s, the boom was over and in 1942 the last remaining mines were closed as nonessential to the war effort.
Burros first came to Oatman with early day prospectors. The animals were also used inside the mines for hauling rock and ore. Outside the mines, burros were used for hauling water and supplies. As the mines closed and people moved away, the burros were released into the surrounding hills.
The burros you meet today in Oatman, while descendants of domestic work animals are themselves wild– they will bite and kick. Please keep a safe distance from them. Wild burros are protected by federal law from capture, injury or harassment. Help protect these living symbols of the old west.”
Oatman, Arizona is an old mining town in the Black Mountains of Mohave County, Arizona. Located at an elevation of 2700ft/896m, it began as a tent camp soon after two prospectors struck a $10 million gold find in 1915, though the area had been already settled for a number of years. Oatman’s population grew to more than 3,500 in the course of a year.
After a few other names, Oatman was named in the posthumous honor of Olive Oatman, a young Illinois girl who was kidnapped by the Apache Indians and forced to work as a slave. She was rescued in 1857 near the current site of the town bearing not only the psychological marks of her ordeal, but physical marks as well. Traded to the Mohave tribe who adopted her as a daughter, Olive had her face tattooed to identify her as a slave/property and photographs of her clearly show the markings.
In 1921, a fire burned down many of Oatman’s smaller buildings, but spared the Oatman Hotel. Built in 1902, the Oatman Hotel is the oldest two-story adobe structure in Mojave County and has housed many miners, movie stars, politicians and other scoundrels. The town was used as the location for several movies such as How The West Was Won, Foxfire and Edge of Eternity. It is especially famous as the honeymoon stop of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard after their wedding in Kingman on March 18, 1939. Gable fell in love with the area and returned often to play poker with the miners. The Gable/Lombard honeymoon suite is one of the hotel’s major attractions. The other is “Oatie the Ghost.” “Oatie,” actively promoted by the hotel’s current owners, is a friendly poltergeist whose identity is believed to be that of William Ray Flour, an Irish miner who died behind the hotel, presumably from excessive alcohol consumption upon findout out that his family had died on their way over to the states. Flour’s body wasn’t discovered until two days after his death and it was hastily buried in a shallow grave near where he was found.
Oatman has undergone a renaissance of sorts in recent years thanks to worldwide interest in Route 66 and the explosive growth of the nearby gaming town of Laughlin, Nevada, which promotes visits to the town. Wild burros freely roam the town and can be hand-fed carrots and “burro chow,” both readily available in practically every store in town for $1. Though normally gentle, the burros are in fact wild and signs posted throughout Oatman advise visitors to exercise caution. Weekends in Oatman can see anything from classic car rallies to mock “Wild West” shootouts right down the middle of old 66. Independence Day celebrations include a contest where participants attempt to cook an egg on the sidewalk with the aid of solar devices. Along with the rest of Arizona’s US 66 towns, Oatman is fiercely proud of its Route 66 heritage and replicas of 66′s black-on-white US highway shield are posted all over the town. Route 66 souvenirs abound and many tourists have pasted autographed one-dollar bills on the walls and ceiling of the Oatman Hotel’s bar and restaurant. Estimates of the number of bills run into the thousands.
From Laughlin, Needles or Bullhead City, Arizona, Oatman is a short drive on State Route 95 to its intersection with Boundary Cone Road in Fort Mohave. About 10 miles (16 km) east of SR 95, Boundary Cone Road meets with old 66, now named the “Oatman Highway.” Oatman is only about four miles (6.5 km) from there.
To view more photos of Oatman, AZ, feel free to view my photo gallery. Link will open a new window.
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