Cottonwood and Jerome Arizona

Wednesday September 26 2018

Most of the road (SR260) from I-17 to Cottonwood is in the final stages of reconstruction. It appears the locals are planning this route as a major redevelopment area. For now it’s very nice with four lanes and traffic circles at nearly every intersection.

Cottonwood has a population of 12,000 and seems to be a normal town with most every type store you would need, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Tractor Supply, etc. It has no high end mall or anything like that but is just your average town, middle class with some lower and a few upper.

The climate here is called semi arid, which means pretty damned near desert like. Millie and I were discussing the difference between the western dry heat and our eastern hot humid summers. I came up with this simple comparison. When the temperatures rise above say 95 degrees in the east, it makes you uncomfortably hot and sweaty. That same 95 degrees out here will blister your skin as it dehydrates you and reduces you to a small leather figurine. 

Old mining town of Jerome Arizona

From Cottonwood we traveled up and up a mountain to the old mining town of Jerome. At one time, when the mines were active it had a population of near 10,000. I would guess that now most of the locals just work here, while very few actually live in town. The old mostly derelict buildings are somehow tenaciously clinging to the mountainside, IMHO one good shake could be the end of old Jerome.

After a while all these tourist traps start to look the same

It has somehow become a tourist attraction of sorts. Bus loads (literally) of daring tourists browse the gift shops and taverns, all the while hoping they aren’t here when the whole town goes cascading down the mountain.

My attempt at ill-humor towards Jerome is of course an exaggeration…but not by much.

Millie relaxing in our campground