30 Hours in Jerome

For being in Jerome for just over 30 hours this weekend, I saw a lot of great stuff. I went up to do a mosaic project with my friend Greg, but spent Saturday exploring the town and hanging out on Main Street.

If you haven't heard of Jerome, Arizona, it's a big ghost town. It's the most interesing city in the state, maybe even in the country. There is just no other place like it. Built into the side of a mountain in between Prescott and Sedona, only 450 people live there. But every weekend it's packed to the rafters with tourists, who keep the art galleries, restaurants, bars, and haunted hotels in business.

The reason the hotels are haunted is this - so many people have died there. The town burned to the ground twice when it was still the 4th largest city in Arizona, and they just kept rebuilding it. In the 1920s, the copper mine owned by Phelps Dodge brought in workers from all over the world - it became a cultural melting pot, and at one point the population reached almost 15,000. At that time, Jerome was known as the wickedest town in the west. When the mine stopped producing, the town dried up. It truly was a ghost town.

You can't really describe Jerome, you have to see it. It's hard to imagine how the houses on the hill remain standing - how they look like solid Victorian structures until you see that they are built on stilts, the owners crossing their fingers against erosion or storms. (And things do slide down the hill - the jail did.) These delicate structures with cracking paint and faded roofs are selling for around $400,000.

To enter the main road from certain streets, you need to view a mirror tree, with its 'leaves' facing 3 ways - because the roads are so winding that you can't see oncoming traffic from either direction. If you are unskilled at driving a stick, don't even enter the 'uptown' area, b/c you may roll backward onto a tourist, or the horses pulling a carriage that is waiting patiently behind you.

But the fun stuff - Jerome is a magnet for bikers. Bikes line the curb in front of the Spirit Room, which is the bar in the Connor Hotel. In the afternoon the bar is filled with bikers. Some are in gangs, some are corporate types with shiny big bikes. I watched a guy in full leather regalia, you know, the corporate type, drop his bike on a side street, blocking the street while he tried to lift it back up and get out of the way. A 70-something man helped him right it, and then maneuver it so he could start the bike without rolling backwards into more tourists. When he finally started it, the older guy's wife started pumping her fists in the air and yelling 'wahooooo!!!'

Another biker took off all his leathers, right down to his skivvies, to put on cooler clothes. His pecs had a small audience of appreciative fans. A third walked away from his bike into the bar, apparently after hours of riding in the wind, his hair a perfect imitation of Ace Ventura's. A truck drove by carrying a huge St. Bernard, looking like he may just roll out of the truck and eat some tourists.

At night, the Spirit Room emptied of bikers and the townspeople crowded out the braver tourists, and they're an eclectic bunch - young artists, gallery owners, cowboys, old guys that looked like hermits, women who looked like they were imported from L.A. People shared tables with total strangers and everyone danced for the band who played original music that sounded like they just stepped out of the 70s. I had been to the Spirit Room a few times since the late 80s but I never saw a more interesting mix of people.

Tomorrow I'll post some pics of the town and our mosaics.