500,000 people a year stop in this Arizona ghost town that refuses to stay dead

Arizona’s wildest Route 66 town won’t let you ignore it

Route 66 cuts straight through Oatman, a former gold mining town sitting at 2,710 feet in Arizona’s Black Mountains. About 100 people call it home year-round, but more than 500,000 come through every year.

Eight blocks of wooden sidewalks, Old West storefronts, and something you won’t find anywhere else on the Mother Road. The burros got here first, and they’ve never left.

The rest of the town grew up around them, and somehow it all still works.

Gold, a girl’s name, and $40 million pulled from the rock

The town takes its name from Olive Oatman, captured by a Native American tribe in 1851 and released five years later. The gold came later.

Prospector John Moss found it in the Black Mountains in 1863, but the real rush hit in the early 1900s when the Tom Reed and United Eastern mines struck major deposits.

By 1941, the district had pulled out about $40 million in gold before the government shut down mining for the war effort.

Route 66 kept the town breathing until the interstate bypassed it in the early 1950s, and by the 1960s, Oatman was nearly empty.

The burros that walked out of the 1800s and onto Main Street

When the mines closed, the miners turned their pack animals loose into the desert. Those burros never really left.

Their descendants now live on about 1.1 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land in the Black Mountain Herd Management Area, and every morning a handful of them walk straight into town.

They are protected under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, so nobody can move them along or push them out. The BLM estimates more than 2,000 in the broader herd zone.

In Oatman, the burros outnumber the people by a wide margin, and they know it.

Hand them a snack and they’ll follow you down the block

The burros come in from the desert looking for food, and some shops sell approved feed so you can give them something.

They poke their heads through sidewalk railings, nudge strangers for attention, and occasionally plant themselves in the middle of Main Street until they feel like moving.

They’re friendly, but they’re still wild animals, so approach slowly and keep dogs on a leash.

A burro-caused traffic jam on a two-lane stretch of Route 66 is exactly as entertaining as it sounds, and you won’t be the only one stopping to take pictures.

A dollar on the wall means you’re good for a drink

The Oatman Hotel went up in 1902, originally called the Durlin Hotel, making it the oldest two-story adobe structure in Mohave County.

It survived a fire in 1921 that took out much of the rest of the town, earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, and has been drawing people in ever since. Walk into the ground-floor saloon and look up.

The walls and ceiling are covered in thousands of signed one-dollar bills. Miners started the tradition, pinning a dollar with their name on it as a tab for future drinks.

The bills never stopped going up.

Clark Gable played poker here more than once

Clark Gable and Carole Lombard got married in nearby Kingman on March 29, 1939, and the hotel has long promoted the story that the couple spent their wedding night upstairs.

Historians have pushed back on that, pointing out the two returned to Hollywood the next morning for a press conference.

What’s better documented is that Gable came back to Oatman regularly to play poker with local miners. He liked the place.

The upstairs honeymoon suite has been preserved and you can see it as a museum attraction. Whether the wedding night story is true or not, it’s been pulling people through the door for decades.

Blank gunfire and a fake bank robbery every afternoon

The Oatman Ghost Rider Gunfighters have been staging shootouts on Route 66 for over 25 years, which makes them one of the longest-running gunfighter troupes in Arizona.

The shows are free, run about 20 minutes, and involve Old West bank heists with plenty of loud blank gunfire in the street. They’re family-friendly, so bring the kids.

Donations after the show go to local charities.

The performance happens daily, and even if you’ve seen staged gunfights before, there’s something about watching one play out on an actual stretch of Route 66 that lands differently.

Eight blocks of leather, turquoise, and Old West storefronts

Main Street runs eight blocks and you can walk the whole thing in 20 minutes, though most people take longer.

About 40 shops line the wooden boardwalks, selling handmade leather goods, Native American turquoise and silver jewelry, Route 66 souvenirs, and Southwestern art.

Along the way, you can peek into a replica mine entrance, a historic jail, and a blacksmith exhibit.

Costumed characters in Old West clothing stroll the sidewalks, and painted donkey murals and old-fashioned photo cutout boards give you plenty of reasons to stop and pull out your camera.

Burro droppings, egg frying, and a shotgun wedding chapel

Oatman leans hard into its own oddness, and the calendar proves it.

Labor Day weekend brings the International Burro Biscuit Toss, where people throw gold-painted dried burro droppings for distance. The Fourth of July Sidewalk Egg Frying Contest puts the summer heat to work.

January has Bed Races down Main Street. The Little White Church of Oatman performs old-fashioned shotgun weddings year-round, done by an ordained minister for couples who want a ceremony that makes a better story than a ballroom.

These aren’t gimmicks bolted onto the town. They’re exactly what Oatman is.

191 curves, no guardrails, and a view into three states

The eight-mile stretch of Route 66 between Kingman and Oatman is called the Arizona Sidewinder, and the name earns itself.

The road climbs through 191 curves and switchbacks with no guardrails, topping out at Sitgreaves Pass at about 3,550 feet. On a clear day from the pass, you can see into Arizona, Nevada, and California at the same time.

The BLM designates this stretch as a National Back Country Byway.

Vehicles over 40 feet aren’t allowed, and even in a regular car, you’ll want to slow down and use the pulloffs. The views from the pulloffs are the whole point.

Thimble Mountain, Joshua trees, and a spring built by hand

The Black Mountains don’t stop at the edge of town.

Heading west on Route 66, you’ll spot Thimble Mountain and Elephant’s Tooth rising out of the ridgeline.

Drive about 25 miles south and the terrain shifts to Joshua tree-dotted ridges with views down to the Colorado River.

Between Kingman and Oatman, the restored Cool Springs Station makes a good stop for anyone collecting Route 66 history.

Off the road in the mountains, Shaffer Fish Bowl Spring collects natural spring water in a structure built in the 1930s with WPA labor. A short set of steps gets you there from the roadside.

The town that survived the gold rush, a fire, and the interstate

Oatman has taken every punch the last century threw at it. The gold ran out.

A fire took out most of the buildings. The interstate killed Route 66 traffic.

By the 1960s the town was nearly gone. Then a revival of interest in Route 66 in the 1990s brought tourists back, and the town has been building on that ever since.

Today it stands as one of the most visited stops on the entire Route 66 corridor. Tourist dollars keep the shops open and the history intact.

Not many towns survive what Oatman survived, and fewer still come out the other side still looking like themselves.

Visit Oatman on Route 66 in Arizona

You can reach Oatman about 28 miles from Kingman via Route 66 over Sitgreaves Pass, or from Bullhead City and Laughlin through Arizona State Route 95 and Boundary Cone Road. There’s no entry fee to walk the town.

The Oatman Hotel Restaurant and Saloon at 181 Main Street serves food and drinks, but doesn’t take overnight guests. For lodging, your closest options are Kingman, Bullhead City, or Laughlin, Nevada.

When the burros come over to say hello, follow the posted wildlife guidelines and buy your feed from the shops in town.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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