REFLECTION, RUMINATION & RHETORIC FROM THE ROAD: JEROME

9. The Almost Ghost Town

Perched upon a mountainside 40 minutes out of Sedona, the town of Jerome is a relic of the old southwest.

In its heyday, this place was reputed to be The Wickedest Town In America.

Now it is one of America’s most haunted:  A living, breathing ghost town—as promoted by its 467 inhabitants who, these days, survive on tourism, not copper mining.

The winding road ascendant to this novel enclave curves through canyons, overlooking red rock country, producing far-ranging panoramas, a constant reminder of the vastness of the United States; of all the natural beauty mankind has yet to spoil.

Jerome was one of the biggest copper mining centers of all time. Back then, it affluently bustled with luxury goods, brothels and saloons.

World wars meant boom-times, literally, as copper barons dynamited mountains to excavate copper ore needed for the manufacturing of weapons that, in turn, went boom.

And then bust.

For Jerome’s economy all but collapsed on Armistice Day, 1918, a situation worsened a decade later by the stock market crash of 1929.

When World War II came along interest in copper was renewed and briefly revived the town.  But it wasn’t to last.  In the late 1940s and into the ‘50s residents sold their homes for bus fare out—or simply abandoned them.

A couple decades later, something interesting happened. The Haight-Ashbury scene broke apart and, preferring to live off the grid, its hippy inhabitants migrated elsewhere,

Some—the acid brigade—moved to Bolinas, a fishing village north of San Francisco (where they remain, in an elderly state of paranoia).

The pot-smokers discovered Jerome, which had become an almost-ghost town with only a handful of original natives still clinging to what once was.

How do you survive in a ghost town?

Hype the hell out of it and lure visitors for commerce!

And that is what they did, transforming Jerome into a living ghost town where merchants celebrate Halloween the whole month of October (a kind of Salem, Massachusetts-West) and ghosts in general year-round.

Today’s residents make the most of their town’s heritage, gift shops galore.

Jerome Grand Hotel, formerly a hospital, is said to be Ghost Central.

But when I first visited a decade ago I opted instead for the Connor, on a corner in the heart of town.

The receptionist eyed me with suspicion.  “You’ve got to sign the rules,” she said.

“We don’t believe in rules,” I replied.

She pushed a document with small print at me.  “You in particular.”

“Does this mean we can’t have our midnight soccer game down the hall while smoking cigars?”

A genuine metal key unbolted a door into an old fashioned room with sturdy bed, clean coverings, solid furniture, tidy bathroom and a window that opened onto a main drag buzzing with “concentricity,” as if Sedona’s vortexes somehow extend to this durable burgh.