Going to a Ghost Town

Josh and I have been wanting to explore a bit of the new world around us. My BIL Jabon told us about a ghost town he heard about that's only about half an hour from our house. So we loaded everyone up and went to check it out.



We went up to Superior, AZ, to the remains of Pinal City, AZ. Pinal City was a silver mining town from 1871 to 1894. Even though the town shut down 116 years ago, you'd think there'd be more left of it, but all we could find were some ruins of a few foundations.



This is what the town looked like around 1880.





The kids had fun posing for pictures near the geocache site.

Josh wanted some peace and quiet and took off on his own little hike. The yellow behind him is Matt and the rest of the kids coming to be by him. Peace and quiet? Come on, Dad. Really?

There were also some really cool mule train wagon tracks.

If you look in the picture below, you can see some round dents between the wagon ruts. Those are the imprints from the mules set into the sandstone.

The kids are showing how deep the ruts really go. Ducks in a row.

The wagons full of the silver ore made a round trip everyday from the mine to the mill. The wagons would be bound together and led by about 20 mules.

One story goes that the mule skinners that ran the trains didn't get paid much. As the mules stubbornly trekked down the trail they would throw bits of ore at them. Then, friends of the skinners would gather up the ore and cash it in and share the profits with the skinners. That's one way to beat the system.

We also checked out the town of Superior while we were out there. Abby and Matt found this tree and decided to ride it like a pony. Unfortunately for them, we didn't stay out for too much longer. It was in the high 90s at 9am and we didn't want to get stuck out there when the real heat struck us.