Goldroad & Sitgreaves Pass, AZ - Rt 66 — Abandoned Places, Gold Rush & Route 66 Travel Photography

After making friends with several burros in Oatman, it was time to get back on the road. My next destination was Sitgreaves Pass, which tops out at 3,550 feet. The pass was named for Captain Lorenzo Sitgreaves, who traveled through the area in 1851. I would be traveling along a very narrow, two-lane blacktop with no shoulders, crazy switchbacks and steep drop-offs plunging thousands of feet down. This is my kind of road.

A lot of mining took place along the stretch of road between Oatman and Cool Springs back in the days of gold, and in fact, is still going on today. The community of Goldroad was once a substantial, mining-based settlement. I’m not sure exactly where the town proper once stood, but there are remnants of building ruins and mines dotting the landscape of the Black Mountains.

Gold was reportedly discovered here in the early 1860s by a man named John Moss, but apparently the area didn’t seem rich enough for him as he later left his diggings for “richer” pastures up near Chloride.

In 1899 or 1900, depending on the source, another miner discovered the Goldroad Mine. His name was Jose Jerez and when he took a sample of his findings to the local assay office, it assayed out at 40 ounces to the ton, a very rich strike. Jose and his partner worked their mine for a while, then sold out to a California company, which in turn sold out to another group of investors. They brought in heavy equipment and the mining amped up. A town sprang up soon after.

During the area’s boom, roughly from 1900 to 1931, some $7 million in gold was taken out of the Black Mountains.

Today there may be few full-time residents, but the mines are still working and employ a good number of people.

Maybe a mine shaft under there?

The Summit

From where Old Blue is parked in the photo above above, I walked a bit out towards a cliff and admired this view to the west. This picture doesn't really do justice to how narrow the road is and some of the hairpin turns there are along the way. Probably fun for that guy on the motorcycle, though.

An establishment called the Summit Gas Station and Ice Cream store was once located at the top of Sitgreaves Pass, on a wide spot on the Kingman side of the road. That must have looked like heaven when folks rounded that last bend and saw a gas station and ice cream store at the top of the mountain pass. All that’s left of the Summit today are some iron bolts and crumbling foundation remains as it burnt to the ground in 1967.

And here is the view, with a bit of flare, towards the east, the way I would soon be driving. I believe the sharp pointy thing on the left is Thimble Butte, which makes a great backdrop to pictures in this area, especially at Cool Springs, which just happened to be my next stop. It was time to see how the downhill stretch of road would be. I've read some stories, and I'm not sure if they're true or not, but supposedly back in the early days of Route 66, the Model T was one of the most widely used vehicles. They apparently did not have a fuel pump to pump gas from the tank to the engine, which was ok as gravity would normally take care of that. Unless the car was going up a steep incline. The solution to the problem? Drive your Model T backwards up the road to Sitgreaves Pass. Not sure I would ever want to try that. But I was going downhill. I commenced coasting.

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