Marked by a big “C” inscribed in the hillside above it, the near-ghost town of Chloride (pop. 352), 53 miles south of Hoover Dam and 15 miles north of Kingman, then four miles east of the highway on a paved, well-marked road, is the oldest and among the most evocative former mining camps in Arizona. Following the discovery of silver here in the 1860s, mining activities continued through the 1940s; the town is now preserved by its dedicated residents.

  A couple of stores and cafés still cling to life, and occasional festivals and flea markets draw sizeable crowds of visitors. Mostly what there is to see are the odd bits of “folk art” so often found in the American desert: strange sculptures made of rusting metal and odd bits of junk, plus comical tributes to the mythology of the Wild West, like a fake “Boot Hill” cemetery with laconic epitaphs and hand-painted signs playing up the apocryphal legacy of the local “Hangin’ Judge” Jim Beam.

  Before I-40 bypassed it in the 1970s, Kingman was a vital desert oasis; it marks the intersection of US-93 and Route 66.