Saturday, April 7, 2012

Mining Town…Ghost Town….Jerome, AZ

March 30 - April 1, 2012 – After a very good night’s sleep back at our camper, we drove a few hours south to Dead Horse Ranch State Park. Despite the name, this is a very nice state park located between Sedona and Jerome. We planned to take a few quiet days to rest and regroup before joining up with my sister at Grand Canyon National Park, April 2nd.

We had heard about Jerome from our daughter, Sarah. She and Jason had enjoyed sightseeing around Jerome, and we were really looking forward to seeing it.

Saturday morning, we drove up the winding road to Jerome….

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Which sits right up the side of the mountain…..

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Jerome was settled in 1876 as a mining town…..They mined primarily copper. In its hay day, Jerome had a population of 15,000. With the Great Depression, and ore deposits petering out, Jerome became a ghost town of maybe 100 residents.

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Jerome currently has about 500 residents, and a cute little downtown area with many of the old buildings still in existence.

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We enjoyed looking around. This is the James Douglas Mansion. Douglas was the developer of the Little Daisy Mine (1912-1938). I do not usually like the Adobe style houses, but, I really liked the outside of this one.

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Jerome also has a quaint old Catholic Church.

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And a thriving artist population……

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We have enjoyed our ‘quiet’ days….using the time to sort out pictures and write up  blogs, as well as take care of a few ‘housekeeping’ chores.

Next stop will be Grand Canyon National Park…….

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