See and do: Watch a performance of the outdoor musical drama TEXAS at the Pioneer Amphitheatre in the nearby Palo Duro Canyon State Park (it’s been performed here virtually every year since 1966), spend time at the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame & Museum to learn about this incredible breed, and watch the dance troupe perform at the Kwahadi Museum of the American Indian. It now hosts a number of famous rodeos (including the Coors Cowboy Club Ranch Rodeo, Working Ranch Cowboy Association, and World Championship Ranch Rodeo), as well as the annual Polk Street Cattle Drive where the streets of downtown Amarillo are filled with around 60 Texas longhorns making their way to the Tri-State Fairgrounds. Known as Oneida (this later changed to Amarillo - Spanish for yellow - for the colour of the soil on the banks of the nearby Amarillo Creek), it grew from a 500-strong tent camp for railroad workers to a hard-nosed cattle town complete with big skies, big steaks, big barbeque joints, and big quantities of oil. Berry selected this well-watered spot along the way of the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad (FW&DC). Then its just a couple of hours drive to Las Vegas where you’ll be staying for the next couple of nights.Ĭlaim to fame: The quintessential land of cowboys and cattle situated at the crossroads of America, Amarillo was established in 1887 when Abilene developer J.I. Suggested holiday: Self-Drive Golden California – set off early on day 8 to miss the Los Angeles rush hour and you’ll arrive in Oatman in time for lunch, see the shootout and to explore the town. Don’t miss the Ghostrider Gunfighters spectacular Wild West shootouts and comedy performances taking place daily in the middle of town at 1:30pm and 3:30pm (for $100 you can even stage your shotgun wedding here). See and do: Check out the Gable/Lombard Room at the Oatman Hotel (it no longer takes guests, but functions as a restaurant and museum), stroll along the town’s wooden sidewalks, browse in the kitsch Americana shops, take selfies with the impossibly cute burros, and visit the Oatman Jail and Museum to see its holding pens and sheriff’s office. Oatman is also proud of its Hollywood connections the Oscar-winning How the West Was Won was filmed here and it’s also where Clark Gable and Carol Lombard reportedly spent their wedding night in 1939 (the refurbed honeymoon suite at the Oatman Hotel is one of the town’s key attractions). Nowadays, it’s packed with wild burros (an old Spanish term for donkeys) who roam the streets waiting for their burro chow (hay cubes), which can be purchased in the town. For a decade, the Oatman mines were among the largest gold producers in America’s West, but in later years the place become another tourist town for visitors passing through the ancient part of Route 66. We travel to these former frontier boomtowns, most of which still embrace their Wild West past (gun-slinging cowboys, dastardly outlaws, swinging saloon doors, one-room jailhouses, liquor-fuelled shootouts over hands of poker) and show America as it once was.Ĭlaim to fame: Named for Illinois-born Olive Oatman who was kidnapped for slavery by an Apache tribe and then sold to Mohave Indians (she was eventually set free and became a celebrity), this small mining camp had all the markings of a gold rush boomtown. The world’s love affair with America’s Wild West has always burned bright, and nothing in the country’s history compares to the period from 1865 to 1895 when prospectors and pioneers pushed their way towards better lives and scrambled for pots of gold.
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