{"id":1792,"slug":"gold-king-mine-and-ghost-town-jerome-arizona","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The Gold King Mine sits just outside Jerome, on ground that produced the camp's founding irony: a shaft sunk twelve hundred seventy feet after copper struck a rich pocket of gold instead. The little camp that served it was called Haynes, and for a while it worked both metals in the shadow of Jerome's far greater bonanza.","The mine's modern identity is the Robertson family's doing. Beginning in 1981, Don Robertson assembled an open-air ghost town on the property — buildings brought in board by board from dying camps across the region — around the surviving mine infrastructure, including a 1914 gas-powered sawmill still in working condition."]},{"heading":"A ghost town built of other ghost towns","paragraphs":["The result is curated and crowded: relocated cabins, a dentist's office, mining machinery, and a private collection on the order of a hundred old vehicles — Studebakers, Harley-Davidsons, and the rest — scattered through the yard as a roadside museum with a working shaft at its center.","The file keeps the source's own candor: the tourism writeup itself notes the site may not be haunted, and no claim is filed. What the archive records is a double artifact — a real 1,270-foot copper shaft that lucked into gold, wrapped in a ghost town assembled, deliberately, from the bones of others."]}],"name":"Gold King Mine and Ghost Town","aliases":["Haynes"],"type":"GHOST_TOWN_MUSEUM","type_label":"Ghost Town Museum","cats":["GHOST_TOWN"],"groups":["ghost-towns"],"desc":"Mining-camp museum at former Haynes.","full_desc":"Gold King Mine and Ghost Town is a ghost-town museum in Jerome, Arizona. Mining-camp museum at former Haynes. It sits in the archive under ghost towns. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — the record is history-forward, no paranormal claims on file. Access details are unverified — research before visiting. For HauntHunt it is exactly the kind of file the archive exists for: a real place, a real record, and a story still being told.","address":null,"city":"Jerome","county":null,"state":"Arizona","postal":null,"region":"West","lat":34.747088,"lon":-112.107515,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"UNKNOWN","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Tourism source says the site may not be haunted. Historic town identity, museum and mining camp recorded together to prevent duplicates.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"LOW","score":49.3,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.6,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"Site preserves a sawmill and former community buildings. Gold King Mine and Ghost Town's past is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer beneath whatever lore attaches. It enters the file through media reporting — documented coverage, not folklore. The record appears in 'Arizona’s Ghost Town Getaways'. The detail belongs to the verified spine of the entry.","evidence":"MEDIA_REPORTED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Arizona’s Ghost Town Getaways","url":"https://www.visitarizona.com/like-a-local/arizonas-ghost-town-getaways","publisher":"Visit Arizona","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Arizona’s Ghost Town Getaways","url":"https://www.visitarizona.com/like-a-local/arizonas-ghost-town-getaways","publisher":"Visit Arizona","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":null,"counts":{"claims":0,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}