Oatman, Arizona: Living Ghost Town: Burros and Gunfights

Please do not feed carrots to the burros. The sugar in carrots causes the burros all kinds of health problems, and the wonderful town of Oatman and its people have been threatened with losing their burros and having them relocated. I have attached a picture that shows the fatty tumors on the neck of one of the burros. Please help to keep the burros in Oatman!

Tons of burros everywhere! Great ice cream! Awesome time!

The donkeys are very friendly and tame, although there are signs warning people not to harass or try to ride them. Most of the shops sell carrots so people don't feed them junk food.

It is part of the legendary highway 66, so some of the shops cater to bikers selling Harley t-shirts. But Oatman is strictly a walk-through town. The donkeys rule the dirt roads!

I needed to get out of southern California so ... I loaded up the little Datsun diesel truck and headed for Oatman, Arizona, some 300 miles away. I had heard wild burros roam the streets of this miners' ghost town turned tourist attraction. It's true! This is NOT the likes of Calico, where you park, pay admission, and go on tours and rides. Oatman is still a functioning town -- there are shops selling tee shirts, antiques, paintings, leather work, and of course ... the Oatman Hotel bar serving adult beverage.

While there, a mobile home burst into flames about 2/10ths of a mile south of town. Quite the smokey event, which brought out a lot of residents to watch. Fire department took at least 15 minutes to arrive, which means there wasn't much to save. Oh well.

The Oatman Hotel has a lot of history which you will see when you walk inside. Don't want to spoil the surprise waiting.

Oatman is located on historic Route 66, a town originally named after the Oatman family was attacked and killed by Indians nearby. Oatman was founded and once thrived due to its proximity to the richest gold mines in the state, which operated from 1904 through 1931. The town population peaked at 10,000 during the mining years, when it produced $36 million in ore. After the mines closed down, the burros used as pack animals were set free -- but they never left.

The construction of I-40 should have nailed the coffin shut on Oatman, but the scrappy town survived into the 1970s, when someone came up with the bright idea of declaring the entire burg a tourist attraction using the decendants of the mining burros as the main attraction. I expected to find a near ghost town, but there were hundreds of people in the town feeding and taking pictures of burros. Burros have total run of the town and people are encouraged to feed them carrots. Some citizens dress in early 1900s costumes to add to the ambience. The result is a "Tombstone, Arizona meets Assateague, Maryland in the Twilight Zone" experience.

A plaque in town reads, in part: "..if it were not for these burros, in all probability, neither you nor this plaque would be standing here today. People come from all over the World to visit, feed, and take pictures of the burros."