A Living Ghost Town
Near Chloride, Arizona
By the middle of the twentieth century, Chloride looked finished. The mines closed around nineteen forty-four, the railroad station was long gone, and the census counted only about one hundred thirty-five residents by nineteen sixty. The obvious fate for such a place was to crumble quietly into the desert, joining the hundreds of true ghost towns scattered across the West.
That is not what happened. Instead, Chloride was slowly rediscovered, first by a trickle of artists drawn to its cheap old buildings, big skies, and rough beauty, and later by retirees and desert lovers looking for a quiet, offbeat place to settle. Roy Purcell's murals in the canyon above helped put the town on the map for travelers.
Today Chloride is best described as a living ghost town, home to a few hundred year round residents, its population swelling in the mild winter months and drawing something like twenty thousand visitors a year. The twenty twenty census counted just over two hundred people. What they have preserved is not a polished theme park but a genuine, lived in relic, kept alive by people who chose it on purpose.
That mix of authenticity and stubborn survival is exactly what makes Chloride worth the drive off the highway.
