Oatman, Arizona: the WildWest

My father-in-law took us on a tour of Arizona. He drove us to Oatman and this is a place where the wild west is still a way of life. They have staged gun fights, an old historic jail, and burros everywhere. The burros are pretty crazy. You can buy a bag of feed and feed them in the streets. They are awful, noisy, and smelly. They demand you feed them as if they owed something. Some of them were laying down and taking naps. They whole thing was pretty surreal.













               
The downtown area is historic because it is the home of an old mining community. The buildings are historic and the few people that live there have major restrictions on building or reconstructing any of the old down town buildings, as in, they can't. As an student of Anthropology I completely understand what a hot dry climate does to preserve things and being in Oatman I experienced this first hand. The buildings are still in good condition despite their age and the fact they are built with wood, not stone. Everything creeks as you walk on the wooden floors.

We ate lunch at the old hotel restaurant. There were dollar bills plastering the walls. I had seen this before in other old mining towns in Arizona. I never knew what it meant, or what it was and I was kind of confused by the large velvet picture of Willie Nelson in the middle of the room. So in my mind I thought this was some sort of alter to Willie with maybe the dollar bills as alms? Although it didn't make any sense because, like I said, I've seen the dollar bills posted on walls before in other mining towns.   The man who was singing Willie Nelson songs and looking exactly like Willie started explaining. He said that the bills were how the miners paid for drinks. They wouldn't hold up well in the mines, so they would write their names on them and post them on the wall. That way when they came back they could get more drinks until it was used up. Like a tab of sorts. It sounded like a confusing situation to me and an easy way for a bartender to get a good tip.

So, for history, gun fights, and souvenirs, if you are traveling around Arizona and you want to see the wild west, find Oatman.