As the party rages on and traffic snarls on Casino Drive during the Laughlin River Run, a motorcyclist’s thoughts can wander to peaceful places and scenic roads. Sometimes all a biker wants to do is get out of the vendor mosh pit and actually go for a damn nice ride.

A visit to the old gold mining town, about 30 miles southeast of Laughlin, is a River Run tradition, best done on Saturday morning. From Casino Drive, ride over the bridge connecting Nevada to Arizona (Nevada-163); turn right (south) on Arizona-95 (Bullhead Parkway). We began from the Pioneer Casino, nearly at the end of the rally hosting hotels. The property and its earthy staff provided a relative calm and quiet haven from the motorcycling masses.

The turn to Oatman is marked by what looks like a hand-painted wooden sign, which is easy to miss. Harder to not notice are the hordes of bikers headed for the hills. Ride about 15 miles along 95 to County Road 153 (Boundary Cone Rd.) and turn left (east). In another 15 miles, you’ll arrive in what feels like 1880, accompanied by clapboard buildings, desert dust and sand, wild burros wandering Main Street, and the usual number of colorful characters and high-noon shootout re-enactors.

From gravelly basin to mountains speckled with minerals and meteorites, Oatman endures in the midst of bent and tortured rock. Volcanic buttes and lava outcroppings, torn earth, shadowy tunnels to the underground, and the stone grist of hardscrabble miners obsessed with finding that elusive glint of gold litter the sun-baked scenery.

Flanked by Battleship and Hardy Mountains, Black Mesa, Mt. Nutt, the remains of a dead volcano called Boundary Cone, and an escarpment bizarrely named Negrohead [Ed note: Searched high and low for the origin of this name and why it’s still in use and couldn’t find it], the pleasant putt screeches to a halt about a mile before town. A phalanx of state and local law enforcement sometimes backed up by the National Guard stand, in my opinion, as a colossal symbol of wasteful government spending, biker profiling, and an unpleasant kick to the groin of our civil rights. If having one big, bad state trooper after another pressing their nose to yours and demanding to know, “Have you been drinking today, sir?” doesn’t bother you, then proceed to the next exit of your freedom. Of course, the constabulary says it’s all for our own good, knowing what drunken, crime doers we all are. Personally, I think arbitrary checkpoints and being hassled by The Man is not something the founding fathers would have tolerated well when they rode out on the trail looking for adventure.

In any event, welcome to Oatman, named after Olive Oatman, who was abducted by the Apaches, traded to the Mohave, and later simply released for reasons unknown, or so the story goes. This party started as a salute to how motorcycle rallies used to be. Since the entire town is a throwback to a boomtown era, this seemed, well, poetic.

Shops offering T-shirts, Native American jewelry, knives, leathers and various and sundry tourist trinkets line the road, once better known as Route 66. When the goldmines spent out in the 1940s, pretty much the only thing keeping the town from the ghosts was the traffic that poured in from the Mother Road. When the interstate system took over in the early 1960s, it bypassed Oatman; hammering what many thought was the last nail in the town’s coffin.

Tourism dollars, spurred in no small part by the growth of Laughlin as a destination, gradually resuscitated the outpost, which experienced a brief mining comeback in the late 1990s. Today, gunfight shows, the Oatman Hotel (no rooms, just burgers), the Olive Oatman Restaurant, Judy’s Bar, little shops and an old time photo store or two provide the employment.

Rather than run the gauntlet a second time on the way out of town, we went out the back door, continuing east on Route 66, past the Goldroad mine (tours are sometimes available) and some stunning desert vistas and the retro Cool Springs Cabins & Tasty Food gift shop before picking up I-40 north to Kingman, Arizona, and looping back to Laughlin.

For more information, contact the Oatman Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 423 Oatman, AZ 86433; 928-768-6222; email oatman@oatmangoldroad.org; visit http://www.oatmangoldroad.org

To read more about Barnett’s coverage of The Mother Road Parts 1 & 2, click here.