Bumble Bee, Arizona

As Philip Varney wrote in his book Arizona's Best Ghost Towns, "Hamlet's father may have been 'an honest ghost,' but Bumble Bee is not. The frontier street is a reconstruction of a western town that never stood at Bumble Bee nor anywhere else." This is one of the buildings along Bumble Bee's phony frontier street, but even so, I thought it made a dramatic photographic subject. The townsite also contains a few authentic ghost town buildings, not shown in this photo.

Bumble Bee is located in central Arizona and can be reached by a graded dirt road from Interstate 17 Exit 248. At the time of my visit (May 1996), Bumble Bee was mostly abandoned and not posted against trespassing. I understand that one building has since been reopened as a restaurant, but I have not been back myself and cannot vouch for the site's condition or accessibility.

August 31, 2004: T. Zeurcher informs me that the phony ghost town buildings seen in this photo were all torn down and removed recently.