Greetings family, friends, neighbors and western theme park fans. Today's visit is to Goldfield Ghost Town, a thriving forty year old roadside attraction in the shadow of the Superstition Mountains in the Arizona desert. Here's more to the story.....Bill 

Western Theme Park Snippets 

GOLDFIELD GHOST TOWN 

ARIZONA TERRITORY 1893 

Bob and Lou Ann Schoose acquired the abandoned Goldfield Mine 

near Apache Junction in the Arizona Desert in 1984 with the intention of creating a mining themed roadside tourist attraction much like that of Walter Knott’s purchase of Calico in the mountains of Southern California’s Mojave Desert three decades earlier. With the help of friends, associates and concessionaires the Schoose’s created Goldfield Ghost Town and Mine Tours, Inc., a collection of restored and rebuilt historic buildings on the five acre site of the decaying former boomtown. Once home to as many as four thousand residents in1893, The Schoose’s now draw thousands of seasonal “snow birds” to their western themed  attraction in the shadow of the Superstition Mountains. 

In addition to the required mystery shack, staged gunfights, gold panning, old 

time photos and specialty shops and food options, Goldfield Ghost Town’s main draw are guided tours of an underground portion of the original gold mine and a miniature train ride. 

Like Knott’s Calico & Odessa Railroad, Goldfield Ghost Town and Mine Tours Inc. offers a narrated ride on the Superstition Narrow Gauge Railroad behind a vintage diesel Brookfield Corp. industrial locomotive dressed with a fake boiler and stack. The loco pulls a short consist of homemade open passenger car and caboose around the perimeter of the reconstructed town on one and a half 

miles of narrow gauge 36” gauge track. The tourist railroad passes a retired Plymouth diesel, and under a trestle holding the original 1890 Porter 0-4-0 narrow gauge steam engine that once hauled ore from the Goldfield Mine. 

Entrance to Goldfield Ghost Town is free year round, however there are fees for individual attractions and rides. 

Contemporary “Goldfield Ghost Town” from my postcard collection.. 

-Bill 1/25