Tom Mix, We Hardly Know Ye
 Tom Mix's boyhood outhouse in Driftwood, PA. The suitcase that killed him is in Dewey, OK, and his death site is near Florence, AZ. Unlike Jayne Mansfield, Tom got a marker for his death site . . . but his movies made more money. |
Mix was a cowboy movie star; a big one. He appeared in over 300 Westerns. He lived the life of a bon-vivant; by the early 1920s this former Texas Ranger was earning the princely sum of $10,000 a week.
But when the talkies arrived, Tom's career arc went as flat as a chuck wagon pancake. Though he made a number of sound Westerns and a serial, he ended up working in rodeos and circuses. Tom died in 1940 in a weird automobile accident, the back of his head walloped by a suitcase that flew off the rear shelf of his single-seated roadster in the middle of the desert.
Tom Mix should have been forgotten. Most of his movies -- released on combustible nitrate film stock -- have been lost. But those who remembered Tom Mix built Roadside tributes to him, and these stubbornly survive. Now the people who remembered Tom Mix are dying, too. Our advice: Visit Tom Mix shrines soon.
Tom Mix Comes Home Museum
Driftwood, Pennsylvania
The Tom Mix Comes Home Museum in Driftwood, is not in town (which doesn't care about Tom Mix) but out on a rural road where first the pavement ends, then the plumbing. The sign "Welcome To Tom Mix Territory," gives no hint of the miles and miles of rutted road you'll have left to travel.
The big attraction here -- for Tom Mix fans -- is his birthplace. The big attraction for Roadsiders is Tom Mix's celebrity outhouse. The Flaughs, the museum's husband and wife owners, though well-meaning are occasionally desperate for company and are black holes of Mix trivia; you can't escape their well-rehearsed ad-libbing. They will talk to you about every single photo, clipping, and collectable in the small Museum. As you wander around the property, large black flies will attack you.
In order to build a monument on the site, the Flaughs sell square inches of the land for $10. Ronald Reagan bought ten square inches, and the Flaughs give out Xeroxes of his $100 check to all visitors. Reagan marked it as a contribution, so taxpayers actually paid roughly $40 of it. Over his square inch is a sign reading, "The President Of The United States Owns This Lot." When the monument is built, RR will be listed as #1 -- though he wrote his check in 1986 and there's still no monument.
Address: Mix Run Rd, Driftwood, PA [Show Map]
Directions: Tom Mix Comes Home Museum. From Driftwood, take Hwy 555 west from Hwy 120 for about a half-mile. Turn south onto Castle Garden Rd, cross the bridge, then left onto River Rd, which becomes Hoover Rd. Then turn right onto Mix Run Rd. Continue bearing right on Mix Run Rd, following the creek, dodging ruts and potholes as the pavement ends, for about four miles.
Tom Mix Museum
Dewey, Oklahoma
The Tom Mix Museum in Dewey, is the best mounted Mix memorial in the country. It has all the important relics (minus the outhouse), including a life-size replica of Mix's costar, Tony the Wonder Horse. Also here is the suitcase of death that fatally doinked TM's head.
Address: 721 N. Delaware, Dewey, OK [Show Map]
Phone: 918-534-1555
Tom
Mix Death Site Marker
Florence, Arizona
The Tom Mix Death Site Marker -- a black iron silhouette of a riderless bronco -- stands roughly 17 miles south of Florence. The road where Tom drove to his end on October 12, 1940 is long, flat, straight -- surrounded by desert scrub and the occasional giant humanoid cactus. Tom died after ignoring warnings about a gully bridge out due to road work, and the suitcase did its evil work.
The gully into which his 1937 Cord plunged has been renamed Tom Mix Wash.
Tom is buried at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, CA.
Address: Highway 79 South, Florence, AZ [Show Map]
Directions: Hwy 79 between mile markers 115 and 116, 16 miles south of Hwy 287 (Florence) and 24 miles north of Hwy 77 (Oracle Junction).
Hours: Daylight hours.
July
2004: At last report, the Cord was no longer at the Imperial Museum in
Las Vegas, NV --
it's now in the possession
of diet guru Jenny Craig's husband, in California.
DEWEY, OK: The curator at the Tom Mix Museum (a Roadside America fan) wants to scotch a rumor that's been making the rounds: That when Tony the Wonder Horse died, Tom Mix cut off his tail and made it into a bedside bell pull for Tom's Hollywood mansion. "That's impossible," she scoffs, "since Tom died two years before Tony." Tom's premature exit also explains why Tony (unlike Roy Rogers' Trigger) was never stuffed when he died, or even given a grave marker. "Tom was dead. When Tony died, who cared?"
The suitcase of death(the one that brained Tom) is still on display here. "That's the important exhibit."
