Weekend Roundup

 Welcome to The Weekend Roundup...hosted by Tom The Back Roads Traveler

My last rounds were coffee and beer. So it's time for some food and sleep!

1. Starts with "J"
2. A Favorite
3. JUNK - chosen by Tom

Starts with "J"

JEROME Grand Hotel AZ


Overlooking the Verde Valley, the hotel is one of the highest buildings in the area. Five stories tall, the building is made out of concrete.
Originally built as the United Verde Hospital in the late 1920s, stories of supposed spirits lingering around the property were reported early on.
Back in this era the town's main attraction was its copper mining business, which would eventually come to a close in 1950. For years the town would wither away, only to come alive again in the 1970s.

FAVOURITE

JOY Toronto ON

JUNK  Yangshou China

Déjà Brew
A catchall for leftover beer, coffee and whatever catches my fancy!

A cup of JAVA in Bantry Ireland

Signs 2

Joining Tom at Signs2.
Wordless Wednesday Wordless Be There 2day


Continuing with pit stops...

December 2012 - Jerome AZ

For more photos of Jerome click here.

With Jerome's economy completely dependent upon the demand for copper, Phelps Dodge Mine closed in 1953. The remaining population of around 50 to 100 people promoted the town as a historic ghost town. In 1967 Jerome was designated a National Historic District by the federal government.

Stone

Dutch's Tuesday Photo Challenge


I was going to go with some obvious choices but when I searched my archives I was surprised and delighted with what appeared.

Dutch's recap.

Inukshuk Normandy France - outside the Canadian Museum

Alhambra Palace Granada Spain - intricately designed pebble path.

Jerome AZ

Siem Reap Cambodia

Budapest Hungary - these memorial stones (so called Stolpersteine or stumbling blocks) commemorate those murdered by the Nazis.

Guadalajara Mexico

Tuesday Treasures

December 2012 - Jerome AZ

More posts about Jerome.

Wordless Wednesday
Signs
Old Cars
2012 Sedona to Las Vegas

Known at one time as “The Largest Ghost Town in America,” Jerome, Arizona was once thought to have been lost to abandonment. The town has made a successful resurgence in recent years and is now home to a population of almost 500 people, a number of preserved historic sites, and an active artist community. However, its legacy of abandonment is far from forgotten.

It is more than 5,000 feet (1,500 m) above sea level. It is about 100 miles (160 km) north of Phoenix along State Route 89A between Sedona and Prescott. Supported in its heyday by rich copper mines, it was home to more than 10,000 people in the 1920s.

The Liberty Theater originally opened in 1918. It featured silent movies and vaudeville acts until its closing in 1929.
It was built to seat 536 people. Tickets were purchased at the front ticket booth for 20 to 30 cents, the cheaper seats being the balcony.

Jerome is referred to in the Barenaked Ladies album, All In Good Time, released in 2010. It is the title of Track 9 with references to Mingus Mountain, from which Jerome can be seen. Folksinger Kate Wolf wrote and recorded a song, "Old Jerome", first released on a posthumous album, The Wind Blows Wild, in 1988.

John Olson's model railroad, the Jerome & Southwestern, was originally developed as a series of articles in Model Railroader magazine and later released in book form. The plans for the model suggest a track layout (diorama) based on locations in and near Jerome.

The novel Muckers (2013) by Sandra Neil Wallace, a former sportscaster for ESPN, is a historical novel for young adults that is based on the Jerome High School football team of 1950. The team went undefeated that year, shortly before the copper mine closed and Jerome's population dwindled. Jerome is the setting for the Witches of Cleopatra Hill series of novels by Christine Pope the novel Jerome Times: Ghosts Upon the Page by Terry Molloy, and a collection of biographical stories, Rich Town Poor Town: Ghosts of Copper's Past by Roberto Rabago.

Built in 1898 by David Connor, the Connor Hotel of Jerome has a colorful past, ranging from the heights of luxury to the depths of squalor and back again. Originally designed with 20 rooms upstairs, this first-class lodging establishment also offered a barroom, card rooms, and billiard tables on the first floor. Rooms were rented on the “European plan” for the princely sum of $1.00 per night. The Connor’s telephone number was 8. The stone foundations were quarried from the hills around Jerome, and the brick was fired in nearby Cottonwood, in the yard of Messrs. Britton and Sharp.

The Connor Hotel circa 1899

Before the turn of the century, David Connor’s hotel had burned to the ground twice, along with many other fine buildings in Jerome’s crowded downtown.

David Connor was fortunate in that he was one of the only two business owners in town to carry insurance, in the handsome amount of $14,500. As a result, he was immediately able to rebuild the hotel, unlike many other buildings lost to fire in the conflagrations that swept Jerome before the turn of the century.
After it reopened in August of 1899, it enjoyed a heyday of being one of the finest lodging establishments in the booming mining towns of the West. The hotel had its own bus for delivering guests to the train depot, and was full to capacity much of the time. It was one of the earliest buildings in Jerome to be fully wired for electricity, and each room had a call bell for service.

Jerome had a post office by 1883. It added a schoolhouse in 1884 and a public library in 1889. After four major fires between 1894 and 1898 destroyed much of the business district and, in 1898, half of the community's homes, Jerome was incorporated as a town in 1899. Incorporation made it possible to collect taxes to build a formal fire-fighting system and to establish building codes that prohibited tents and other fire hazards within the town limits.

Wordless Wednesday

 

I'm posting at Wordless Wednesday today.

 
Also posting at Signs, Signs.

December 2012 - Jerome Arizona

Jerome AZ

We were in Jerome AZ last Saturday and visited the ghost town. We had been here before and it hasn't changed much. It is probably not worth the $5 admission but we enjoyed it anyway. I took a lot of photos of the old car grilles.

Ultimate Road Trip - Sedona to Las Vegas

We checked out of our condo in Sedona after our seven day sojourn. Our final destination on this leg of our road trip is Las Vegas where we will stay until mid-February. Our check-in date was Sunday December 9.

Since we are only about 270 miles from Las Vegas  and we have a day to get there we decided to take our time and do some sightseeing on the way and spend the night in Kingman AZ.

Our first stop was in the town of Jerome. We had been here before but it is always fun to revisit some places. The drive to Jerome is not one of my favourites as it meanders to about a mile above sea level. At 5,200 feet above sea level it is known as "America's Most Vertical City" and "Largest Ghost Town in America".

Parking was difficult to find as it was a Saturday and the town was holding its children's Christmas party The fire trucks were giving them rides around town with the sirens whirling.

We found a spot, gathered our cameras and started poking into cute little gift shops. We stopped for coffee at Bobby D's BBQ at the English Kitchen, the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the state of Arizona. In its early days, it was owned by a Chinese immigrant, and it served the miners and other workers in the town. Today, it maintains a cozy atmosphere and a spectacular view of the Verde Valley, clear across to Sedona.

Once known as the wickedest town in the west, Jerome was a copper mining camp, growing from a settlement of tents to a roaring mining community. Four disastrous fires destroyed large sections of the town during its early history, resulting in the incorporation of the City of Jerome in 1899.

Founded in 1876, Jerome was once the fourth largest city in the Arizona Territory. The population peaked at 15,000 in the 1920's. The Depression of the 1930's slowed the mining operation and the claim went to Phelps Dodge, who holds the claim today. World War II brought increased demand for copper, but after the war, demand slowed. Dependant on the copper market, Phelps Dodge Mine closed in 1953. The remaining 50 to 100 hardy souls promoted the town as a historic ghost town. In 1967 Jerome was designated a National Historic District by the federal government. Today Jerome is a thriving tourist and artist community with a population of about 450.

The Connor hotel is a landmark in town (even on our last trip) where lots of bikers hang out.

We decided to drive to the ghost town before lunch. I'll cover the ghost town in a later post.

We had planned on having lunch at The Asylum Restaurant in the Grand Hotel. 

However parking was even worse when we got back to town so we decided to just drive on and grab something as we were booked into a mountain resort that we didn't want to have to find in the dark. This turned out to be a very good plan.

So we headed down the highway with its hair raising twists and turns, I guess you know by now that I do not like these types of roads!

We made a stop in Seligman as I was following our route in our Route 66 book.
A trip down Route 66 in Seligman is a trip back in time to the days when Route 66 was the Main Street of America. In the late 1970's Seligman was bypassed by the Interstate and the Santa Fe Railroad ceased its operations in the town in 1985. Many old towns with similar histories would have faded away once they were bypassed, but not Seligman.

By this time we decide that we need to get to Kingman and find our resort. We set the GPS and we reach Kingman around 3PM  and then started climbing Hualapai Mountain Road. We knew the resort was twenty miles south east of Kingman. This road climbs and climbs and climbs in an almost deserted area. There was a lot of traffic coming the other way.Finally the GPS announces "you have reached your destination" in the middle of nowhere. We pull out our phones to ask directions but both phones are without service. We debate turning around and finding somewhere else but decide to continue climbing. Suddenly there are lots of people and a ranger station. John goes into the ranger station and comes out smiling stating we are only a mile from the resort. On we trudge and  finally find the sign for The Hualapai Resort and get checked in.

Our room is called a suite and it was very cute. Our room was totally decorated in bear motifs. Everywhere you turned there were bears. 

It was great, if chilly to walk to the restaurant for a great dinner. These baked potatoes were great they had a very smoky flavour them making us assume they were baked with the BBQ ribs that were on the menu as well.

The lodge was all lit up for the season as were the houses in the area.