Route 66;
where all those wonderfully off-beat attractions of ‘Roadside America’
culture first sprouted. By the 1920s, Route 66, known then as the
National Trail, was fast-becoming the most popular road in the country
for Westward pioneers travelling across the Diablo Canyon. A 19th
century isolated trading post in Arizona suddenly became a bustling stop
for drivers seeking gas, food, lodging and entertainment. Today, the
only thing you’ll find in the barely-there town of Two Guns is the
extensive ruin of a 20th century tourist trap.
The last caretaker’s mobile home has been deserted and stripped, and the rare visitors passing through can roam the site freely. It is believed the roadside town is
cursed by a ghost tribe of Apaches who were burnt alive in a nearby cave
in 1878 by the Navajos. Looking back at the events, it would seem the
site was doomed shortly after an eccentric entrepreneur Harry “Two Guns”
Miller came into town with dollar signs in his eyes.
Mr. Miller had got wind of the growing
prosperity at the canyon lodge and made a deal with the landowners,
Earle and Louis Cundiff, to lease a business site. He transformed the
desert land into a full-blown tourist trap, complete with gas station,
lodging, food emporium and of course, a zoo.
Miller, who claimed to be full-blooded
Apache, also started giving tours of the canyon, which during the 19th
century, was the site of the gruesome confrontation between the Navajos
and the Apaches. He cleaned up the cave which had essentially served as
a tomb for the remaining skeletons of 42 Apache men that had died there
in a surprise angry retaliation from the Navajos for attacking their
villages.
Miller called it the Apache Death Cave and built
fake ruins around it and sold the Apache’s skulls as souvenirs. To make
it a little less morbid, he later strung some lights, added a soda
stand and renamed it the “Mystery Cave”. This is when things started to go very wrong for Two Guns.
A series of unfortunate events began to
plague Miller and the tourist town. Two Guns suddenly spiralled into
misfortune after a major robbery of the trading post. Tension between
Miller and his landlords, the Cundiffs, resulted in a heated dispute
where Miller shot and killed Mr. Cundiff. He was acquitted at trial but
incredibly, he was soon after mauled by mountain lions, twice,
on separate occasions. Next he was bitten by a native venomous lizard
known as the Gila monster which left him with a disfigured arm. Finally in 1929, a devastating fire
engulfed the roadside town of Two Guns. After losing his greedy court
battle with Mrs. Cundiff to keep the land, Miller finally left. Louise Cundiff and her new husband tried
to rebuild the site but by this time, the heyday of Route 66 was over.
It had been rerouted to the opposite canyon and the tourists had stopped
coming.
A derelict Two Guns was sold and leased
numerous times during the 1950s, remaining in a sorry state. In 1960s,
as a new Interstate 40 was being built that would give the old
attraction its own highway exit and new visitors, an ambitious new owner
began re-building a restaurant, souvenir shop, gas station, another
zoo, and restoring the tourist trails to the Apache tomb cave. Things
were looking up for the attraction but in 1971, it all went up in flames
again when another devastating fire swallowed up the last hope for the
Two Guns. It has never been inhabited since.
Dare to visit? The barbed-wire fences
have open gates so all of the old and newer buildings are accessible.
The old stone buildings are intact, despite heavy graffiti. Today, Two
Guns has an unlikely Hollywood guardian in Russell Crowe, who purchased
the property in 2011 to film a remake of WestWorld. No word on
when production will start (status: ‘in development’ on IMDB.com), but
it would probably be wise to make a ‘no smoking rule’ a priority on set.
Until then, the site is completely abandoned; no caretaker, no soda
stands, no nobody…
