Goldroad Arizona on Historic Route 66

Synopsis

The Great Depression of 1929 brought many unfamiliar problems and unusual situations into the lives of the families who were caught up in its terrifying grasp.

Goldroad Arizona on Historic Route 66 is the story of the lives of those families who lived in this small gold mining camp of Goldroad, Arizona and the surrounding mining camps of Oatman, Katherine, and the Cyclopic Mill during the Great Depression and found it as a safe harbor in a terrible storm.

Also included are stories about Historic Route 66, the Hoover Dam, Boulder City Nevada, Needles California, Silver City New Mexico, Vanadium New Mexico, and summer vacations with her Uncle Joe, who was a cattle inspector on Hoover Dam, and who also ran cattle on the Cyclopic Ranch.

One historical happening was the great Okie migration that made its way along the now famous Historic Route 66 that passed through Goldroad. Desperate families in old worn-out cars and trucks with all their earthly goods tied on top, made their way to California, the promised land, which was just a few short miles from Goldroad across the Colorado River.

Another was the surprise attack December 7, 1941, by Japan on Pearl Harbor which threw our country into World War II. This quickly put an end to life in Goldroad and sealed the fate of Goldroad as an operating gold mine for the next fifty years. The closure in early 1942 sent the supervisors and most of the miners and other workers in Goldroad to the company's new lead-zinc mine they had been forced to develop in Vanadium, a mining district located near Silver City, New Mexico.

The nightly troop convoys the summer of 1942, before her family left Goldroad in November 1942, was one more reminder that the country was at war. The laughter and talk of these young soldiers, on the way to who knows where or what, bounced off the high, rock cliffs as their noisy troop carriers wound their way on steep grades and winding curves through a silent, dying gold mining camp.

Dettagli