🚘 Cleator, Arizona – A Ghost Town with a Yacht Club

Imagine this: you turn off the paved highway and your tires crunch onto a dusty gravel road. The desert stretches out around you, the hills covered in stubborn, low brush. It feels like you’ve left modern Arizona behind and stepped into a sepia postcard. As the dust swirls in your rear-view mirror, weather-beaten wooden shacks slide past, each one looking like a prop from an old Western.

After a few miles, the road curves — and there it is. A cluster of crooked buildings, leaning against the desert wind, holding on for dear life. Welcome to Cleator, Arizona.

Technically, it’s a ghost town. It sits in Yavapai County, about ninety minutes north of Phoenix, but calling it a “town” feels generous. According to the 2020 census, only eight people live here permanently. Eight! That’s fewer than the number of dogs I saw chasing dust along the roadside.

But let’s roll back the clock.

Cleator was born in 1864, in the golden age — literally. Prospectors found gold in nearby Turkey Creek, and the place was christened the Turkey Creek Mining District. By 1869, there was even a post office. Imagine the optimism: dusty miners, hoping the next letter to home would bring luck or money. That post office lasted only a few months before it shut its doors. Gold has a way of disappearing quickly, and so do people chasing it.

Still, the dream lingered. By the late 1800s, hard-rock mines sprang up, promising wealth underground. Lev P. Nellis, a mining entrepreneur, set up a store, a saloon, and the basics of a little frontier community. Miners worked, drank, and dreamed here.

Then came the railroad — or rather, Murphy’s so-called Impossible Railroad. By 1902, the line snaked through the Bradshaw Mountains, linking Turkey Creek with nearby camps like Cordes and Crown King. For a while, the town thrived. Supplies rolled in, ore rolled out, and the saloon was never empty.

In 1915, the story took a turn. A sea-faring adventurer named James P. Cleator, originally from the Isle of Man, struck a deal. He bought the settlement from Nellis, handing over $2,500 and giving up his share in their ranching venture. Ten years later, in 1925, he went one step further — renaming the post office and the entire town after himself. Modest? Not exactly. But effective. From then on, Turkey Creek was Cleator.

And then, decline. By the 1920s, the mines were drying up. The easy gold was gone, and without it, people left. By 1932, the railroad tracks were torn up. The sound of train whistles gave way to silence.

James tried to sell the whole town in 1949. Picture the ad: sixty residents, a store, a saloon, and a functioning post office — all for sale! But no one bought it. So Cleator stayed in the family. When James passed away in 1959, his son Tom took over, keeping the bar alive until his death in 1996. Visitors remember Tom fondly — a man who poured drinks, told stories, and kept the ghost town’s heart beating.

Fast-forward to today. Cleator is still clinging to life, with a population you could fit in a single minivan. The main attraction? The Cleator Bar & Yacht Club. Yes, you heard that right. A yacht club — in the middle of the Arizona desert. Out front stands a weather-worn schooner called the Black Scorpion, surrounded by surfboards, jet skis, and a catamaran or two. All of it completely landlocked, hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. It’s ridiculous. It’s absurd. And it’s wonderful. Because sometimes absurdity is the best reason to stop.

Walk around, and you’ll see old wooden houses, a stone schoolhouse, the remains of a store. Some are occupied, some are crumbling. They whisper of busier times — the clang of picks, the rumble of ore carts, the laughter from the saloon. Today, 19th-century cabins sit side by side with satellite dishes and rusting trucks. And high on a nearby hill, letters spell out “Cleatorwood” — a redneck Hollywood in miniature, watching over the desert like a tongue-in-cheek landmark. Who knows — maybe one day it will even host its own film premiere.

But Cleator’s story isn’t just stuck in the past. In February 2022, the town sold for $956,000. The Cleator family, who had owned it for generations, finally passed it on. The new owner promised to preserve its ghost town spirit and gently develop it for tourism.

Then, in December 2024, came another twist. Canadian mining exploration company King Global Ventures announced it had bought a 10% stake in Cleator, valued at around half a million dollars. Their plan? To use the town as a base camp for drilling and exploration — and to leverage its charm for shareholder events and educational tours. In other words, Cleator is once again caught between mining dreams and showmanship. Some things never change.

So what is Cleator today? It’s not just a dot on a map, or a dusty road stop. It’s a stage where history and humor meet. A place where absurdity — like a desert yacht club — lives comfortably beside reality. And it’s a reminder that the Wild West isn’t gone. It’s just waiting, tucked away in the Bradshaw Mountains, ready for anyone willing to take that gravel road and see where it leads.

P.S. The video story is in English – but if Russian is your language, you’re not forgotten. This video story is available in Russian on my YouTube channel too.