The Road Up from Highway Ninety-Three
Near Chloride, Arizona
Chloride sits at the end of a short spur road, tucked against the Cerbat Mountains at an elevation of about four thousand feet, some twenty-three miles northwest of Kingman. Most travelers reach it by turning off United States Highway Ninety-Three, the busy corridor that carries traffic between Las Vegas and the Phoenix area, near a wide spot in the road called Grasshopper Junction. From there a paved lane runs a few miles east into the hills to the town.
The region is deep Mojave Desert country, a land of Joshua trees, creosote, jagged peaks, and enormous silence, and it lies just a short drive north of Kingman, one of the great surviving stops on old Route Sixty-Six. That location is part of Chloride's charm. It is close enough to the main highways to be an easy detour, yet far enough up its own dead end road to feel genuinely remote, a real desert town rather than a roadside attraction.
As you make the final approach, watch the Cerbats grow ahead of you and imagine the wagons, stagecoaches, and ore trains that once labored along routes like this one. You are following the same path that first brought silver seekers to this stubborn old camp more than a hundred and fifty years ago.
