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Camping, At No Time In the History of My Life, Have I Enjoyed So Much To Be A Wife - Cindy Bonish 12/07
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Vulture Gold Mine & Ghost Town We had no idea what to expect today. We had found a few different websites that had only some mediocre pictures of the Vulture Ghost Town, but nothing that gave any detailed description of what we would find. Our
last two Ghost Towns we visited we needed to
either hike into them, or needed our 4-wheel
drive truck to get us there, so we planed for the worst, and packed a
big lunch after loading up the camera gear. We left the camper at
Driving down the twisty Vulture Road, it didn't take long before we spotted a few abandon buildings from the edge of the road and pulled over to scope them out with the binoculars. Cindy said “I think if we drive up around this turn, there might be a road that leads us back to them.” Remember that up till this point, we had only looked at this area on our maps and what we could find on Google Earths Satellite imagery. If you could have seen the shock on our faces when we drove around the turn to find a big WELCOME TO VULTURE GOLD MINE sign with the hours for Vulture Mine Ghost Town, you probably would have been laughing as hard as we were. None of the websites told us that this was an actual tourist attraction with a paid entrance fee. Well we had come this far, we might as well go see what it was like. Thank God we didn’t just turn around right there, because the rest of the day would be as close to PERFECT as a day could be.
Roma Hagan and her husband Marty have been running the Vulture Ghost Mine for the past 4 years. They took over from Roma’s parents who had managed the ghost town since the 70's. This is one of the reasons why the Vulture Gold Mine Ghost Town is so well preserved, there has been someone watching over it to make sure it’s contents don’t get pilfered like so many of the other ghost towns have had happen. Like the National Park Service and their beliefs, they don’t try to repair any of the buildings, they only allow them to stay in their natural state of decomposition. Roma told us "Even with her parents as caretakers, people would still steal sections of wood from the buildings closer to the road, and off of the numerous structures on the tour." It’s just better to have someone here to watch over the buildings so vandals don’t come in and ruin this once thriving town. In the late 1800’s, while Henry Wickenburg was out hunting, he had shot a Vulture; he was looking for his kill when he found gold. He soon started digging and struck it rich. His original house, or what is left of the stone walls are still on the grounds.
He moved away from the mine, and started what is now known as the town bearing his name. He opened a produce company which supplied the miners with their food and goods. When I asked if that's where he made his money? Roma said no he spent everything he made trying to fight the Phelps Corporation for the rest of what they owed him. He ended up dying penniless. Back in the Ghost town, there is the Hanging Tree where 18 men who were caught stealing gold were lynched. The town of Vulture brought in so many people to the state of Arizona, Phoenix is what spawned off of it. There is still plenty of history and gold here and just the Assay Office alone, which was built in 1884 out of ore from the mine is said to contain over $600,000 in gold and silver in the stone that make up the walls. Even
with Marty and Roma keeping a watch over the grounds, Marty told us
While we sat and talked to Marty and Roma, they asked where we were camping as they have dry camping available on the grounds for only $10 per night. Now why would we leave a FREE campground just down the road to pay $10 to camp with no hook-ups? Well for one, it would allow us to have our house right here in the ghost town, and for two, we wanted to get the much needed afternoon light that we are always looking for when it comes to our pictures. Staying on the grounds would allow us to do that. So we headed back to the camper, hooked it up real quick and pulled it down to the Vulture Ghost Town. They have this little level area right beside the old School House where we could park. We were the only ones back here, so it was like being camped right back in the middle of the town of Vulture in the 1800’s. For $10, you just can’t beat the scenery! Once
we had the camper situated, we threw on the backpacks and slung the
cameras around our necks heading back into history. Wandering around
the Ghost Town was like being on a movie set. Everything is placed like
people are going to come in for work at any minute. When President
Franklin Roosevelt
The Vulture Gold Mine was the largest producing mine in the sate of Arizona, and the books show the mine gave up over $200,000,000 in gold and silver in its time, and still is estimated to hold 2 to 3 times that amount in its deep, dark caverns. So like the old saying goes, “Who ever owns this property is sitting on a gold mine!” Roma told me "The 300 acres of mine are for sale for 6.5 million. But is would cost triple that to bring it up to a working mine." She went on to say "There is no power out here, so it would be a costly endeavor." It's too bad tourists aren't allowed into the mine anymore. With over 30 miles of tunnels in the mine and the bottom being 3000 feet deep, I'm sure there are a few ghosts down there too. Roma told me that only the first 700 feet are able to be explored, because the rest is flooded."
One of the machines that just amazed me was in the Power Plant. This large building is home to a diesel generator that was built in Germany and shipped over to the states in pieces. The motor on this monster is the size of our 25’ camper and standing beside it just amazed me. There is a footing where a second generator once sat, but Roma told me "Once the mine closed down, another mine in Northern Arizona bought one of the generators and moved it up to their facility." I can only imagine how loud it must have been for the workers who sat in this room while these locomotive sized engines were making electricity for the rest of the town. You have to remember that this town out in the Sonoran Desert is so far out, they didn’t have electricity from the normal grid, they had to generate there own. This is also why the town is still without power today.
He said “So many people think because it has bars on the windows it’s meant to keep people in. What people don’t realize is the bars are meant to keep people out!” The building was used to hold the barrels of Cyanide and Mercury which are used in the leaching process while mining. No wonder when I stuck my head in between the bars to look inside, I came stumbling away coughing from the wretched smell. This also explains why the trash cans used around the mine are old Cyanide drums! While Cindy and I walked around snapping picture after picture, we watched numerous people who would walk in, walk around the self-guided tour and walk out, all in about 20 minutes. Neither of us could figure out why people would just peek their head into a building that was humongous in size and house numerous pieces of machinery, but not take the time to really look at any of it? For us, we find these types of artifacts fascinating. A few times we might have spent twenty minutes in one small building and while we would be walking to the next abandon structure, Cindy would say “Did you check out that wild tool back in the corner?” Of course I hadn’t seen it because I was too enthralled with some other thing and had no idea what it was, so we would turn around and head back in. This
was the way we spent our day. Like two kids in a toy store. Luckily
for me I have 3 batteries for my camera, because I used all 3 and filled
two
Late in the afternoon, we headed back to the camper to take the dogs for a walk and grab a bite to eat. The weather was now as close to perfect as you could get with a slight breeze and temperatures in the high 60’s. Like I said, days like this are as close to perfection as one can find. Spending the day in the Sonoran Desert, wandering around a Ghost Town with my beautiful wife who happens to enjoy photography just as much as I do is like living a dream. Most people would be thinking about their job, their house or the bills, but for me, today I just thought how lucky we are. With the sun setting over the Sonoran Desert, we headed back out for round two of the photo extravaganza. This was another reason we had decided to camp on the grounds. Roma had told us the Ghost Town closes at 4pm, but if we were to camp here, she would allow us to walk around after they close to get some sunset pictures. Roma and Marty had to go into Wickenburg for the town fair where Roma’s mother was performing in a play, and would lock the main gate behind them. So we had the whole Ghost Town to ourselves at sunset. This was when the icing got put on the cake. With not a sound around us except the flapping of the bats wings and the chorus of crickets, we sat in total silence just watching that big orange ball drop behind the mountains.
The desert was coming to life as it does during the cooler night time hours and off in the distance we heard a coyote howl for its mate. That beautiful glow after the sun goes down was playing tricks with our eyes as many of the structures looked like there was lights on inside. Late evening rays were bouncing off walls scattering light and you could picture a once bustling town moving with people getting ready for their evening in the desert.
But we weren’t, it was just the two of us sitting out with countless ghosts probably wondering who these two strange beings were with all this camera gear. I don’t really know if I believe in ghosts, but I sure could feel a sense of others around us. You have to imagine with all the people who have lived and died here, there has to be a few still roaming the sandy trails of Vulture. Once it got dark enough that any photos were useless, we strolled hand in hand back to the camper. While Cindy mixed us a couple of drinks, I grabbed the lawn chairs for what would be an even better display of stars. With no light fall off for miles in any direction, the Milky Way was so bright you could have read a book from its light. The sliver of moon was hovering right above the school house and the silhouetted Saguaro cactus all around us made it fell like we were in some forest of tall trees. We toasted glasses and thanked the Gods for such a wonderful day. The second toast was to all the ghosts around us and their beautiful town they let us enjoy today. Vulture Gold Mine Gallery Can Be Seen Here
___________________________________________________ If you're interested in visiting the Vulture Mine & Ghost Town, they don't have a website, but you can reach them by phone.
Vulture Mine They're open September 1st thru June 30th, closed Christmas. Please call ahead for group rates and camp outs. They have areas available for large RV's or large groups of RV's, but there are no facilities, so your RV must be self contained. There is a full service town just 12 miles up the road in Wickenburg with all the amenities and a gas station that has a dump station at it.
Earth First! We can Mine the Other Planets Later
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the
BLM Campsite thinking it was in a perfect spot.
We
wandered into the little building where the sign hanging above the door
read “Vultures Roost”, and sat talking with the manager
Roma
told us that Wickenburg only operated the Gold Mine for a few years
before he sold it to Benjamin Phelps. They paid him
$20,000 of the $85,000 he had sold it for, but apparently they never
paid Wickenburg the rest of the money. 
“We
still have tourists 
closed
the mine in 1942 (WW II) people left believing they would return in six
months
There
are numerous buildings on the property, many of which house monstrous
machinery used in the mining business. There are a few different mills
with machinery resembling things you’d normally see in a scary movie.
Another
building that grabbed our attention was a small concrete structure with
bars on the windows. Naturally you would think this was the Vulture
Town Jail. Marty cleared that up for us when we asked him about it.
Compact
Flash cards worth of images.
All
the structures were now alive with the only residents that call them
home. Little bats were flying all around us, many almost landing on us
as they would fly so close. The surrounding mountains were turning from
brown, to orange to a deep blood red. The desert scrub was now a bright
green and the surrounding plants all changed from a harsh looking spiky
plant, to a soft glowing blanket covering this barren ground.
Every
now and then, Cindy or I would say to one another “Is this for real?”
It was like we were on a movie set, and I was waiting for someone to
yell “Cut!” 