Where the heck is Oatman, Arizona?

[tom thomas]

Just wondering if the LF photographer is still there. Several years ago, my wife, her cousins from France and I missed a turn out of Kingman heading for Vegas and we wound up in the 19th Century. Temps hotter than NYC in August, donkeys biting anyone holding out a hand, kicking the rest. Tumble down shacks, traces of a mining past.

We staggered out of the sun into a shop offering period photos in costume. Guy had at least an 8X10 using Polaroid sheets for instant prints. We had so much fun dressing up for photos at the time, bought several poses which we still enjoy in our respective homes.

Anyone know who this guy may have been? I wonder if he knows just how many memories he created while sharing his fun. Here is a very low res copy of his great photo. I'm wearing the double bandaleros loaded with at least 45-70 shells and holding a .22 lever action.

Now that I have a Graflex 45 Speed, I need to head that way again to enjoy photographing the great scenery.

tom

[Sirius Glass]

Might this< http://www.mrharv.com/, be him?

Steve

[Laura_Campbell]

I don't know who he was, but if there's a chamber of commerce in Oatman, they might know. And if that doesn't produce a name, you could try calling the local bar. In small towns like that, the bartender usually knows everyone. ;-)

[Terry Hull]

I can confirm the biting donkeys are still there!

[civich]

Oatman Arizona: A lunar landscape, biting donkeys, daily gun battles in the street, 8x10 photographers ...... an alternate reality if I ever saw one.
-Chris

[Michael E]

If you have travelled from Kingman to Oatman on the old Route 66 and have watched the animated movie "Cars", you might have noticed similarities concerning the landscape.

I visited Oatman last year with my six year old son. Coming from Europe and looking for the old west, we loved it. We saw the gun fights and the burros (they didn't bite us), but not the nostalgia studio. I bought some lens cleaning product from a guy in a chair on the sidewalk (sounds stupid, doesn't it?) who claimed to have been a professional photographer for 30 years. It works, too. I can give you his e-mail adress.

I have encountered similar studios in Sacramento, CA and Silverton, CO. There must be lots of them around.

[tom thomas]

Sirius, I think that is probably him. I checked his web page, looks like he is successful as I see a setup in a mall too.

Michael, I'm so glad you and your son were able to enjoy the old west before it completely disappears. I'm also glad to hear that Oatman is still having fun.

I introduced this subject kinda hoping that the guy in Oatman was one of this group. I wanted to publically thank him for providing such a fun service in such an out of way place in Arizona.

One has to be a Route 66 nut to even find this place. That's why we found it. Route 66 passes through Tulsa, OK where I live so curiousity got the best of me when we were driving to Vegas way back when. We get so many cyclists, old car enthusiasts checking out the local Route 66 history sites in town. They keep going on west too.

Tom

[rdenney]

One has to be a Route 66 nut to even find this place. That's why we found it. Route 66 passes through Tulsa, OK where I live so curiousity got the best of me when we were driving to Vegas way back when. We get so many cyclists, old car enthusiasts checking out the local Route 66 history sites in town. They keep going on west too.

I've driven that stretch of old Route 66 west of Kingman, back in 1985. It is now County Road 10, and it's a real museum of 1930's highway design. The old concrete pavement going into Needles was so bad that we ended up having to wire up the exhaust on that Pontiac station wagon in a car wash. Oatman was more of a ghost town then than now.

I've also driven what remains of US-66 in New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, when the main western route was much different than the current I-40 alignment. That road traversed La Bajada Hill, which many locals ascended in reverse gear to get the lower ratio. I did it in a jeep, and had to work my way around a range of large boulders that had planted themselves in the road alignment. Much fun.

And I surveyed the parts of US-66 that were not buried under I-40 in the Texas panhandle, finding such ruins as Glen Rio, etc. That was in 1982 and that one had the original concrete pavement in that ghost town, with weeds growing from the cracks three feet tall.

Rick "who was responsible for removing the US 66 designation from I-40 in New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma" Denney