Oatman

Oatman is named for a kidnapped girl who never lived there. Olive Oatman was fourteen in 1851 when her family's wagon was attacked on the trail west — most of the Oatmans killed, Olive and her sister taken captive, traded to the Mohave, tattooed on the chin in the tribal fashion. Her sister died in a famine; Olive was ransomed at Fort Yuma in 1856 and became one of the most famous captives in America — her chin tattoo on the cover of every captivity narrative. The miners who found gold in the Black Mountains in 1863 named a claim after her; the town took the name in 1909.

The boom was late and huge — the Tom Reed opened in 1908, the United Eastern hit in 1915, and within a decade Oatman had ten thousand people, seven hotels, twenty bars, and three of the richest gold mines in Arizona. The United Eastern closed in 1924 after pulling $13.6 million; the government shut the rest in 1941 for the war effort. By then Route 66 ran through town and kept it on life support — until 1953, when the highway was rerouted and Oatman was bypassed completely. The population fell to near zero.

The burros stayed. The miners' pack animals were turned loose when the mines closed, and their descendants still wander Main Street — federally protected, mildly pushy, and the town's entire remaining economy. Oatman rebuilt itself as a Route 66 ghost-town attraction: staged gunfights, wooden sidewalks, burros in the gift shops. It's a town that survived by becoming a performance of itself — which, for a place named after a girl who became a legend by surviving, is almost appropriate.