Beaver Dam, Arizona

Beaver Dam sits in a narrow strip of Arizona wedged between Utah and Nevada, a place you pass through rather than stay in. Mormon colonists first settled here in eighteen sixty-three, drawn by the Beaver Dam Wash and the same agricultural potential that had pulled settlers into every river bottom in the region. The wash took its name from the many beaver dams that once backed up water across this corridor.

More significantly, the route through here was part of the Old Spanish Trail and later the Mormon Road, the wagon track connecting Salt Lake City to Los Angeles that carried California-bound emigrants through the Mojave from eighteen forty-seven onward. Gold Rush traffic in eighteen forty-nine pushed many wagons along this corridor. Arizona reorganized its road signs in nineteen forty-seven and dropped the plural, changing Beaver Dams to Beaver Dam.

The little community never incorporated, remaining a census-designated place straddling an ancient crossroads.