Chloride Mining Town

Chloride is Arizona's oldest continuously inhabited mining town - silver diggings from about 1863, 229 residents at the 2020 census - sitting 88 miles southeast of Las Vegas, a shade under two hours down US-93 past Hoover Dam. It's free to wander: false-front buildings, rust-art yards, the volunteer-run Cyanide Springs replica town where gunfight reenactments play out most Saturdays at high noon in the cooler months, and the little Jim Fritz Museum inside it (usually the 1st and 3rd Saturdays). The signature detour is 1.5 miles up a dirt canyon road east of town: Roy Purcell's 1966 murals, more than 2,000 square feet of visionary color painted across granite boulders, titled "The Journey: Images From an Inward Search for Self" and retouched by the artist himself in 1975 and 2006.

Time it right or find it sleeping: the town truly wakes on Saturdays, when the shops open and the gunfights fire, though the museum only unlocks on the 1st and 3rd. Weekdays are quiet, with much of Tennessee Avenue shuttered. The gunfight season stands down in the summer heat, dining amounts to one restaurant (Yesterday's at Shep's Miners Inn) plus the Mineshaft Market, and there's no gas in town. The murals road is maintained and passable for any car driven gently: washboarded, dusty, worth it. At just over 4,000 feet it runs cooler than Vegas; bring water and a layer, and plan the trip as a half-day loop.