Bumble Bee: Arizona's Sweetest Ghost Town

The exit sign says Bumble Bee, and yes, that is really the name. This tiny settlement is one of the oldest communities in northern Arizona, first visited by United States soldiers in the eighteen sixties posted on frontier outpost duty.

Bumble Bee got a post office in eighteen seventy-nine and served as a stagecoach stop. Several stories explain the name. One holds that gold prospectors found a bumblebee nest near the creek. Another says early travelers described the local Native people as thick as bumblebees.

With the stagecoach era gone and mining played out, the settlement faded. Today almost nothing remains but the legend and the name, which has stuck for more than a hundred and fifty years and counting.