U.S. Highway 60 to Salome, Arizona - "Where She Danced" - 2008

Traveling East on Interstate I-10 and U.S. Highway 60 to Salome, Arizona - "Where She Danced"

Midday on May 15, 2008, I departed from Los Angeles, California, traveling that day to the little town of Quartzsite, Arizona.  Located on Interstate Highway I-10, just twenty miles east of the Colorado River and the border that the mighty river forms between Blythe, California and Ehrenberg, Arizona, Quartzsite often represents no more than a handy gas stop for those who travel between Los Angeles and Phoenix, Arizona.

 

As with many towns and cities in the Southwest, the population of Quartzsite flexes with the season.  The “snow birds” start arriving from Canada and the northern tier of states right after Thanksgiving and many stay until February or March of the following year.  During the winter season, the population swells to the point that hundreds, if not thousands of RVs, campers and travel-trailers stay in the open land that surrounds the town.  Swap meets and entire RV dealerships spring up over night, then disappear as the weather warms in the spring.

 

Arriving as I did in mid-May, the town seemed deserted, with only a hardy few souls holed-up in RVs that have been permanently rooted to the ground.  Arriving just at sundown, I captured the beautiful evening sky, as the light began to fade.

 

Jack Kerouac, in his classic novel, “On the Road”, published in 1957, had this to say about driving the old Highway 60, replaced by I-10 in the late 1960s: “Off we went.  I began recognizing towns in Arizona I’d passed in 1947 --- Wickenburg, Salome (where she danced), Quartzsite.”

 

Rather than taking I-10 into Phoenix the next day, I backtracked over Jack Kerouac’s old route, enjoying the mostly two-lane US Highway 60 through the Sonoran Desert.  All that afternoon, I watched puffy white clouds drift across the skyline while I headed on a beeline towards the old west town of Wickenburg, Arizona.

 

For some reason, no one can say the word “Salome” without following it with the phrase, “where she danced”.  Looking into this subject, I discovered the following historical account: “The town of Salome was established in late 1904 by Charles H. Pratt.  Pratt was speculating on where the railroad would lay its tracks, and missed it by a mile, so that the community had to be moved to its present location.  In the venture with Pratt were Earnest and Dick Wick Hall, the latter a widely known wit.  Dick Wick Hall was responsible for the story that the town was named because Mrs. Grace Salome Pratt, on taking off her shoes, found the sand burned her feet, hence the slogan, “Salome where she danced.”  As you can see in the accompanying picture, Salome is still famous as the place, “where she danced”.

 

For anyone traveling between Los Angeles and northern Arizona, I recommend old US Highway 60 as a great way to bypass Phoenix all together.  Any motorist who has arrived in Phoenix during rush hour (which lasts from 6:00 AM until 7:00 PM) will love the uncrowded old highway and its many charming vistas and decrepit little towns.  With their old time motels and abandoned brick buildings, one feels like they really are traveling back in time to the 1940s.

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By James McGillis at 07:21 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link