{REMEMBER - Click on any image to view full size, then use the back button on your browser to return to this page}
 |
| (Fig. 01) |
Trip Notes: On 03/29/2013 we were expecting the arrival of our friends Jim Herring and Patrick Adams for another one of their week long vacation visits to Las Vegas. Having arrived a day earlier than Jim, Connie and I got to spend an entire day with Patrick. After a lovely lunch at Matteo's, the restaurant inside the historic Boulder Dam Hotel, we headed over the Mike O'Callaghan - Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge at Hoover Dam for a drive into Arizona.
 |
| (Fig. 02) |
Our goal was the ‘almost’ ghost town of Chloride (Fig. 02), Arizona, situated between Kingman, AZ and Boulder City, NV, just a few miles off US-93. At an elevation 4,009 feet, this once vibrant mining town of over 1,500 people, is now a small village of less than 250 people with 1 motel, full service restaurant & bar, 1 convenience store and several gift shops. Today it is most known as the site of the Roy Purcell Murals (Fig. 04). Roy Purcell, now of Tubac, AZ, formerly of Chloride, AZ and Henderson, NV, is best known for his innovative etchings, though in his later years he used sculpture, watercolor, oil, pastel, glass, wood, paper and many found objects for his art. People around Chloride know him for his murals on the granite faces in a canyon in the Cerbat mountains just east of Chloride.
 |
| (Fig. 03) |
The artist, labeled these murals, “The Journey: Images From an Inward Search for Self” and has said that too understand the murals, "you need to read them right to left." Originally painted in 1966, they were vibrantly repainted by Roy and his son in 2006, in honor of his 70th birthday. They are richly colored and full of recognizable objects but portrayed in contexts not easily understood unless you were able to go back some 40 years ago into Purcell’s mind at the time. The first mural depicts the Tennessee Mine (Fig. 03) and is enjoyable, yet the one immediately to the left depicts a large claw that seems to be destroying the mine. The Tennessee Mine was the largest in the area and produced $7.5 million in gold, lead and zinc before it closed in 1947.
After taking the rough drive out to the murals, we stopped the old abandoned two-room jail (Fig. 05) built in the 1890s, and pictures in the collage above (Fig. 01). After a stop at the the original train depot (Fig. 06) which served the spur line of the Santa Fe Railroad from Kingman and was used from 1898 to 1935, we drove back into the center of the town past the oldest post office in Arizona (Fig. 07) for a stop at Yesterdays Restaurant (Fig. 08), which used to be the famous Butterfield Stagecoach stop from 1868 to 1919. After some cool refreshment and desserts of cheesecake and chocolate mouse pie, we made the drive home. On our way out of town we passed a really cool truck (seen in Fig. 01). Click here for a Polytech collage of this unique vehicle. When we got back home, we all went up to GVR and got in a little gambling before Patrick and I headed to the airport to pick up Jim. |
 |
| (Fig. 04) |
|
 |
| (Fig. 05) |
|
 |
| (Fig. 06) |
|
 |
| (Fig. 07) |
|
 |
| (Fig. 08) |
|
