Oatman is a Northern Arizona town where "the burros roam the streets like dogs do in other towns." Wild burros roam Oatman without restraint and can be hand-fed much to the delight of visitors. Oatman's burros are descended from pack animals freed by early prospectors and are protected by the by the US Department of the Interior.
Since it opened in 1902, the 10- room Oatman Hotel has offered the only viable lodging in Oatman. The two story adobe Oatman Hotel is listed on the National Register of Historic Buildings. An integral part of Oatman's lore and history, the hotel is where Hollywood's first "It" couple, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent their wedding night in March 1939 after having been married in nearby Kingman, Arizona.
Coupled with its forlorn appearance and located on Oatman's only paved street, Main Street, a street made famous as part of the famed Route 66, once the "Mother Road" that connected Chicago to California. A highway with countless tales ghost of sightings, but Oatman may hold the most interesting ghosts.
Visitors tell of William Ray Flour better known as "Oatie," who died here of alcohol abuse during the Great Depression. His body was found in a trash bin behind the hotel two days after he went missing. Before his death, Oatie worked at odd jobs in Oatman, though he had once been a miner and a cowboy. Oatie is considered a playful ghost who doesn't like to have the window in his former room closed. Hotel guests and employees claim, regardless of how many times the window is closed, that same window will turn out to be reopened.
Hotel employees like to tell visitors that when a skilled photographer took photos a few years ago in the room once occupied by Gable and Lombard, he found the ghostly outline of a man in the developed pictures. Others claim to hear laughter and whispers coming from the former honeymoon suite when it is empty; perhaps the couple... "had so many fine memories of the old hotel that they simply refuse to leave."
Ghosts reportedly have been seen in the halls and in the lobby of the hotel. Despite such widely held lore, skeptical residents and visitors claim there are no ghosts in the Oatman Hotel and anything ghostly reported there is purely the product of a vivid imagination in hopes of creating supernatural tales about much-loved Route 66, although none can explain why toilets will sometimes flush and lights will come on in unoccupied rooms of the hotel.
Forever linked to Route 66
The weather-beaten mining town of Oatman once boasted a population in the thousands; today that population is closer to one-hundred residents. Oatman is positioned in the foothills of Arizona's Black Mountains, 30-miles southwest of Kingman. The section of Old Route 66 leading into Oatman from Kingman is narrow, dips, twists and turns, it makes one wonder what travellers in their Model-T's, during the Depression thought as they travelled this stretch of remote desert.
In their pursuit of a better life in California, most Dust Bowl travellers came with little familiarity of the region, many certainly had to have longed to turn back to what was known to them, rather than push onward into further uncertainty. Located on the outer rim of the Mojave Desert, the area around Oatman beyond doubt must have seemed like Hell on earth during the hot summer months, when daytime temperatures of 110-degrees or more are not unheard of.
Skeptics acknowledge the Oatman Hotel is forever linked to Route 66's history. Today the Oatman Hotel is overflowing with memorabilia from its past and some hold firm that there are ghosts of an earlier time. The famed Gable and Lombard Room's furnishings recreates the late 1930's period the same as it was when they stayed here.
Following their honeymoon, Gable and Lombard frequently returned to the Oatman Hotel for its peace and quiet, as well as privacy. Clark Gable was well-known in town for spending his evenings playing poker with a number of the local residents. Sadly, their life together was interrupted by the ill-fated plane crash that took Lombard's life near Las Vegas, Nevada in January 1942.
The crash followed America's first bond rally of World War II. Ms Lombard was on a tour in her home state of Indiana to raise desperately needed money for the war effort by selling war bonds. When she and her mother, who was travelling with her, boarded the plane in Indianapolis to return to California, Lombard addressed fans saying, "Before I say goodbye to you all, come on and join me in a big cheer! V for Victory!"
Carole Lombard's death was the first war-related female casualty the United States suffered during World War II. Devastated by his loss, Clark Gable soon joined the United States Army where he served as a gunner aboard a bomber on combat missions over Europe. The Liberty ship SS Lombard was named for his wife and Gable attended its launch two years later on January 15, 1944.
Whether it is the ghost of Oatie or Hollywood royalty couple, Gable and Lombard, ghost hunters and the curious who wish to experience the paranormal for themselves gather to the Oatman Hotel. To both believers and the townspeople who want to see more tourism, Oatman will always be closely linked to the paranormal!
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