A day trip to Oatman Arizona!

Drive along Route 66 about 30 minutes northeast of Needles California and you end up in Oatman Arizona. A former mining town over 100 years old… Some say it's a ghost town! Oatman was named in honor of Olive Oatman. As a young girl she was kidnapped by an Apache tribe, sold to Mojave Indians and later rescued through a trade in 1857 near the current site of the town. In 1921 a fire burned the town down. The only building saved was the The Oatman Hotel, built in 1902, it is the oldest two-story adobe structure in Mojave County. It has housed many miners, movie stars, politicians and other scoundrels! Apparently Clark Gable and Carol Lombard honeymooned there in 1939! 

Oatman is now a busy tourist stop along Route 66, with souvenir shops, restaurants and a couple of small saloons! Wild burros also roam freely. They are descendants from a pack donkeys turned loose by early prospectors, and are protected by the U.S Department of the Interior. For a dollar we bought a pack of donkey treats, and became quite popular LOL!