A miniature "Tiny Town" along the train tracks is next to a gag outhouse inhabited by dummies, which is next to a graveyard ("The Last Dig"). The town is built on a hill, and there are nooks to explore along with the mercantile, apothecary, bordello, and an olde timey photo salon. Wandering Goldfield visitors are forewarned by liability waiver signs that the site is frontier-rugged - wooden walkways, rickety steps and handrails, uneven slopes, and the occasional confused rattlesnake.
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"They didn't charge to get in." And he's also seen Wild West attractions become ghost towns after changing admission strategy: "The original Rawhide was free to enter then they started charging to come in, and that really hurt them." Rawhide was eventually sold off and moved. Some just come in for the gunfight, but many buy a meal and go to some of the attractions."Īs a kid growing up in southern California, Bob witnessed this approach working spectacularly at Knott's Berry Farm. "I'm not greedy," Bob said, "I want people to see the history of Arizona, and have a good time.
Gunfights never end well for most of the participants. The shops close at five, but the Mammoth Saloon glugs along until 9 pm. Or they buy a souvenir magnet or an ice cream cone, and watch men shoot guns at each other.
Visitors pay to enter the Mystery Shack or a museum, or to ride a horse or Arizona's only narrow gauge train. There's no charge to park and walk its streets and enter stores and restaurants, with an a la carte approach to individual points of interest.
Goldfield differs from large, commercial pay-to-enter attractions. "We used some of the original foundations - the snack bar is on the site where Doc Waterbury lived - he was the last owner of the mine - until the 1970s." Schoose wrote a book about the site's history: Goldfield Boom to Bust - Arizona Territory 1893. "It's laid out exactly the same" as the Goldfield site, Bob said. While that property had little to offer, the partners bought the Goldfield Mill site, a nearby 5-acre property in 1984, and spent nearly five years doing painstaking reconstruction of the 1890s version of the town. In 1983, Bob spotted a For Sale sign on five acres in Apache Junction, the site of the gold mine and historic Goldfield. Prospector character cutout against the Superstition Mountains. By the time we got home, we had some good ideas for a business." After one job in San Diego, on our way home we got to thinking of some things the economy won't affect so much - talked about ghost towns and gold mines that tourists visit. "Those kind of jobs are affected by downturns in the economy. "I'd been doing construction work and earthwork and demolition all my life - jobs all over with crews," Bob said. Bob is one of the owners and was a powerhouse behind the resurrection of Goldfield in the 1980s. "I've been at it for 32 years," Bob told us. The unofficial mayor of the privately owned town is Bob Schoose. Now Goldfield booms once again - as a commercial Ghost Town, with a sprawling array of recreated buildings, and Wild West trappings that tourists crave.
Eventually all of the buildings were gone, and parts were salvaged and carted off elsewhere. In 1943, a fire accidentally caused by an errant military training flare burned down 60% of Goldfield. It had a sputtering revival between 19 (renamed as Youngsberg), then waned again. Five years later, after prospectors had dug out all of the gold, the population deflated, and Goldfield went ghost dark. The original town sprang up in 1892, peaking at 28 buildings, with a community of up to 4,000. This roadside reconstruction of a gold discovery boom town delivers period characters, a mine tour, a mystery spot, a reptile museum, and legends of a lost treasure. We'll say it: Goldfield is a dazzling nugget of desert entertainment. The sheriff prepares to deliver frontier justice.