PRESCOTT, Ariz. — Dust still boils up from the unpaved road as visitors make their way to the not-quite-extinct ghost town of Bumble Bee, winding through rolling hills made small by the Bradshaw Mountains to the west.
It is a vast desert covered with flat-faced prickly pear cacti and accented with the elegant fingers of ancient saguaro reaching for a blue-as-robin-eggs sky.
The few roadside cattle stare blandly at passing traffic as if seeing a vehicle for the millionth time, which couldn't possibly be true out here in what is true wilderness.
Man-made sights along the way include various and sundry rec heads (recreational-minded folks) who have already found this wide-open space, as evidenced by RVs, four-wheelers and jeeps dotting the countryside with occasional regularity.
You're almost there when you cross a cattle guard and a hand-built stone bridge above a glistening stream — Bumble Bee Creek.
Don't blink when you hit Bumble Bee or you'll miss all 200 yards of its one and only street.
Once there, visitors can take a well-needed break from the hustle of modern life and step back at least 40 years to a time when elbow room was plentiful and folks had room to breathe.
The freeway exit sign reads "no services," but that's not exactly true.
Bumble Bee has a rustic trading post with a Tombstone rosebush draping across the entrance, 1940s music drifting from behind the bar, a hand-built river rock fireplace taking the chill out of the air and down-right good smells (and tastes) of such belly-pleasing meals as sirloin burgers and grilled cheese sandwiches.
Besides the trading post, there are exactly four houses in Bumble Bee, a padlocked former mercantile and a crumbling fake ghost town, all surrounded by green-trunked Palo Verde trees, a lone Century plant of the agave variety, and, wouldn't you know it, bumble bees in January (only a few, hovering friendly-like around the truck).
The old mercantile stands in reasonably good condition, built as it is of black lava rock from a nearby, but not readily visible volcano, judging from the lava-covered ridges around Bumble Bee.
The adjacent "ghost town," a row of board-and-batten-gone-bad buildings, built in the 1970s by an eager entrepreneur, is crumbling into the rust-brown desert. A hangman's noose on a mock gallows swings in the breeze, accompanied by the creak of rusted corrugated tin close by.
Few human sounds reach town nowadays.
Bumble Bee was never a thriving frontier town, just a small stage stop called Snyder's Station that connected Phoenix and Flagstaff, via Prescott, from 1877 through the 1950s.
Bumble Bee, though always a small and virtually insignificant town, has been bought and sold, literally, lock, stock and barrel, more times than most houses.
Jeff Martin bought Bumble Bee and a thousand head of cattle just before the depression; Martin's widow, Edna, sold the town to Charles E. Penn and his wife in 1948; in 1969, "Crazy" Ed Chilleen leased the town; in 1974, George Pope bought it and most recently, the Bumble Bee Corp. of Scottsdale purchased all 200 acres, excluding the trading post.
The Bumble Bee Ranch and the Bumble Bee Trading Post, owned by Elissa Fulton, are the only commercial ventures in town; the rest is a free-wheeling sightseeing adventure.
Elissa and husband Jerry bought the trading post, formerly the town's schoolhouse, in 1979. The couple had moved straight to Arizona from Alabama, she said.
Elissa cooks for the joint in the girls'-bathroom-turned-shoebox-size-kitchen, and since Jerry's death in 1998, runs the trading post with sidekick, Virgil George, who works as waiter and quasi-tour and history guide.
They claim to be Bumble Bee's only permanent residents.
Stories abound of how Bumble Bee got its name. One theory is that its first settlers in 1863 said the "Indians were as numerous as bees."
Another story is that prospectors found a bumble bee's nest full of honey in the cliffs along the creek, hence naming it Bumble Bee Creek.
That would be the most likely version, considering settlers' propensity to name a place after its most obvious attributes or outstanding history, such as Big Bug Creek, Bloody Basin, Badger Springs and Horse Thief Basin, all of which one passes by on I-17 on the way south to Bumble Bee.
The only other thing to see in Bumble Bee is the Bumble Bee Ranch. As many as 2,000 people a year come to the ranch for Western outdoor recreation, entertainment and relaxation. Like the movie "City Slickers," the ranch offers corporations and individuals year-round horseback-riding, cattle drives, gold panning, target shooting, Humvee, ATV and helicopter tours, as well as cowboy meals and live entertainment.
"People have a blast, relax and forget about everything that's bothering them," said ranch manager Kelly O'Shaughnessy.
Bumble Bee officially became a ghost town June 27, 1974. It is 2,500 feet above sea level and usually about 5 degrees cooler than Phoenix.