Places We Have Called Home In 2020

Home Is Where We Park It – Fort Beale RV Park, Kingman, Arizona

May 30, 2020

Temperature 104 Degrees

Mohave Museum, Mining and Kingman Airfield

 

Did you see that rocket go!  What an accomplishment for our country.  It was so thrilling to see that rocket lift off, to watch on a live feed the astronauts in the cockpit, then to see that first stage return to earth and stick the landing.   The astronauts are now in orbit and preparing to dock with the International Space Station.  God speed to both of you, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley.  

Despite the heat we both knew we needed to get out.  After all it was only 104 degrees so not a problem.  Especially since there was a strong breeze blowing all day.  More about our escapades in the coming days but first we’re going back to the Mohave Museum to finish our tour.

This is the last major hall of discovery.  Oh, about those outside exhibits, they were temporarily closed so we didn’t get to see them.

A time line regarding mining in this area.  As we were soon to discover, along with ranching, mining played a huge role in the development of this area.

Thank you very much but I’ll stick to Elvira.

I’d love to know what led to the enactment of the City Ordinance on the left!

Cordella Kay.  Talk about one tough lady.  She, literally, did it all and became a very successful and shrewd business woman.

The first silver mine in the area.

Seems someone didn’t think far enough ahead before beginning the development of the town.

Well, at least something survived when the mine went bust!

So much for the mines.  They, indeed, played a pivotal and important role in the overall development of this area.  Without them, well, I believe I can honestly say we probably would not be sitting here in Fort Beale RV Park because there would be no Kingman, AZ.

Kingman Army Airfield.  This is where many miners went to work because of better wages.

A bit of research regarding the airfield revealed the following:

The Army Air Force Flexible Gunnery School, Kingman, Arizona, was built at the start of World War II as an aerial gunnery training base, located on approximately 4,145 acres in Mohave County next to U.S. Route 66. Arizona was an ideal location due to its sparse low population and miles of wide open spaces.  It offered its first classes in January of 1943, and was renamed Kingman Army Air Field (KAAF) later that year with the primary mission of training gunners for the B-17 Flying Fortress.  The air field became one of the Army Air Corps’ largest, training 35,000 individuals. Its facilities included housing for 3,200 enlisted men, 3,070 cadets and 430 officers. “Bugs Bunny” became the base’s official mascot because of the large number of rabbits that inhabited in the area. The base newspaper was known as the “Cactus”. With the end of the war, additional training bases were not needed, and Kingman was ordered to close.

Active duty military personnel typically flew the aircraft into Kingman, and civilian employees would handle parking and classification. To accommodate the large numbers of employees, tent cities were erected on site. In subsequent months, brand new aircraft directly from assembly lines were even disposed of at Kingman.

Once at the storage depot fuel was drained from the aircraft and sold. Aircraft engines were then removed and placed in rows on the desert floor.  Interior items of the aircraft such as radios, oxygen equipment, handguns, manuals, life rafts, fire extinguishers and instruments were removed.  The main aircraft airframe was then sliced into major pieces using a guillotine. Some hand cutting of smaller parts was also done.  The final step was placing parts into the smelter, or furnace, for melting. Three furnaces were operated at Kingman for melting about 70% of an airplane’s metal components into ingots. The furnaces were run 24 hours a day, and could consume up to 35 aircraft a day.  A total of 85 reconnaissance aircraft, 615 fighters, 54 light bombers, 266 medium bombers and 4,463 heavy bombers were disposed of. These 5,483 aircraft scrapped at Kingman generated $7.5 million in gross income.

By July of 1948, less than three years since the end of WWII hostilities, the job was done. A huge part of the American airpower fleet had been reduced to ingots. Storage Depot 41 was returned to the county as a municipal airport. Today, the Kingman Airport & Industrial Park is located five miles north of Interstate 40 in Kingman, Arizona, and spans 4,000 acres. The industrial park is a vibrant commercial community, and home to more than 70 businesses in diverse fields, including the temporary storage of airliners.

But not everything was melted down.  Take a look.

Just who, and why did someone cut this piece out and hide it?  No doubt it holds special meaning for someone, but to date the museum has been unable to find that one special person.

Our tour of the Mohave Museum is now finished.  If you are ever in the vicinity of Kingman I encourage you to take time to visit it.  It is absolutely fascinating and so informative.

Day is over and night is here and we’ve come to the end of another day on The Road of Retirement.  We had a delightful couple of hours out and about today in the town of Kingman and the surrounding area.  More about that in a coming blog.  As of now it is time to sit back and relax and enjoy a glass of wine.  Hope your day was as great as ours was.

Thank you for taking the time to read our blog.  We’re grateful for each and everyone of our readers and their comments.  See you tomorrow.

These are the voyages of  Elvira and it’s two intrepid travelers.  Our continuing mission: to explore as many new states as possible, to seek out new acquaintances and make new friends, to boldly go where we have never been before.

See you on down the road!

 

 

Places We Have Called Home In 2020

Home Is Where We Park It – Fort Beale RV Park, Kingman, Arizona

May 29, 2020

Temperature 101 Degrees

Mohave Museum, Ranching and Miniature Room

That my friends is in the shade!  It didn’t last long as it quickly settled back to a more comfortable 97 degrees.  Yet, once again as you can see by the top temperature we’re not sweating it in Elvira.

We’re going back to the Mohave Museum to continue our tour.

We’re now moving into the second large exhibit hall which is all about ranching in this area over the years.  Let’s take a walk together through this informative exhibit.  There is a lot to be learned so here we go.

In our travels around this area we’ve noticed many cattle yards.  The most recent one I remember was just outside Wickenburg.  If my memory is correct we’ve seen others seemingly in the middle of nowhere but always adjacent to either a major highway or rail line.

We’re going to move now to what I call the miniature room.

How many of the items mentioned in the above descriptive plaque can you find in the pictures below?

How many did you find?

The Small Family Residence

Early transportation westward.

That’s it for now.  Tomorrow we’ll conclude our tour of this fascinating museum that chronicles the development of this area.  Stay tuned, lots more interesting discoveries to be made.

Our day on The Road of Retirment has come to an end.  Not much happening today in real time.  We refilled our propane tank.  Finally fixed the outside water leak in the wet bay.  Played another round of dominoes.  The rest of the day we just sat back and kept cool.

On the lighter side.

 

Thank you for joining us today.  We always appreicate your company and comments.  See you tomorrow.

These are the voyages of  Elvira and it’s two intrepid travelers.  Our continuing mission: to explore as many new states as possible, to seek out new acquaintances and make new friends, to boldly go where we have never been before.

See you on down the road!

 

 

Places We Have Called Home In 2020

Home Is Where We Park It – Fort Beale RV Park, Kingman, Arizona

May 28, 2020

Temperature 98 Degrees

Mohave Museum

Today was another indoor day in an effort to beat the heat.  The AC has been running all day and will probably continue doing so well into the evening.

There is one more place we visited that we want to share with you.

So what is this museum all about?  Their bio puts it this way:  The Mohave Museum of History and Arts in Kingman, Arizona is a private, not-for-profit organization, which was founded in 1961. It focuses on the preservation of the heritage of Northwestern Arizona and of the presentation of history and arts to the public.

This larger than life mural is by local artist Sandy Rusinko who is a member of the Mohave Artist and Craftsmen’s Guild.  It is on the front of the building just after you enter the parking lot of the museum.

An exhibit just before you enter.  It fits in well with the theme of the museum which is all about a visit to the pioneer past of this area.

The first exhibit is The Hall of Presidents.

Most of these artworks were painted by renowned Master Painter, Lawrence Williams (1913-2003).

Then we move into the first hall that chronicles the development of this area.  There is just so much here that I can’t possibly cover it all.

What I will do, though, is share with you some of the exhibits in this hall beginning with the mural painted along the top of the wall.  Just beautiful.

 

The Explorer was built for the sole purpose of exploring the Colorado River to determine the feasibility of transporting troops and supplies up the river into Utah.  It was built in a Philadelphia ship yard, disassembled and shipped via Panama to the west coast were it was reassembled.  It was soon discovered that it was woefully underpowered making travel upstream against the raging current of the Colorado River both slow and dangerous.  Nevertheless, a point was reached just about 30 miles above where the present day Hoover Dam is located before it was shipwrecked.  Its successful trip, nevertheless, opened up the Colorado River to riverboat traffic which ran successfully until the coming of the railroad.

In this first hall are a series of exhibits numbered one to ten entitled The Mohave Epic.  These exhibits chronicle the history of this area from early BC, through early exploration of the area, ranching and mining, boom and bust, the coming of the railroad, the surge in population after WWI and WWII, and so much more.  Here’s some highlights from these ten exhibits.

 

 

 

Note the prices!

 

 

Yes, there is really a proving ground in Arizona.  We’ve even tried to get a tour of the facility but no dice.  It’s closed to the public.

There were other exhibits in this hall.

Did you catch what this steam engine was used for?  Saw wood, OK.  Operate a washing machine!  Goodness how big was that washing machine.

A half scale model of a covered wagon complete with tools and supplies.  It was built by disabled Vietnam Veteran David Savage.

We have several more halls to make our way through but we’ll call it for today.

Our day on The Road of Retirement has now come to an end.  We had another day with record breaking temperatures.  Once again, though, we were cool and comfortable inside of Elvira.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again we are two of the most blessed and fortunate people in the world.  God, indeed, has been good to us over the many miles we have traveled, and He has brought us through the many challenges and struggles we have faced along the way.  Yes, God Is Good All The Time!

This says it all for me.

Thank you for joining us today.  We always appreicate your company and comments.  See you tomorrow.

These are the voyages of  Elvira and it’s two intrepid travelers.  Our continuing mission: to explore as many new states as possible, to seek out new acquaintances and make new friends, to boldly go where we have never been before.

See you on down the road!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Places We Have Called Home In 2020

Home Is Where We Park It – Fort Beale RV Park, Kingman, Arizona

May 27, 2020

Temperature 99 Degrees

Kingman Heat Wave

Locomotive Park

The weather report has issued an excessive heat warning for Kingman.  Really?  The bottom number was in the sun this morning.   Within an hour we settled back into a more reasonable 99 degrees where we stayed until about 6 pm tonight.  We then dropped to a cooler 94 degrees.  Thank goodness we had the front AC unit replaced when we did.  We are cool and comfortable within Elvira.

This is another outdoor park that we visited in Kingman.  It makes sense inasmuch as the railroad played such a pivotal and important role in the development of Kingman.

 

This is Engine 3759 built in 1928 by Baldwin Locomotive Works of Eddystone, PA.  It went into service in 1929 and ran between Kansas City and Los Angles, and did this 10 times a month.  Though it could easily reach a speed of 100 mph it usually cruised along the rails between 50 and 60 mph.  It was retired from service in 1957 after having traveled  2, 585, 600 miles.

Donated to the city of Kingman the issue now became, how to get it to its new home in the park.

About a quarter of mile from the park is the main rail line that runs through Kingman.  The answer – build a temporary spur line from there, across Historic Route 66 to the park.  As soon as the engine was moved to its new home the track was torn up.  It was the shortest lived railroad spur in the history of the Santa Fe Railroad lasting all of about 45 minutes.

On the front of the locomotive we noticed a blue ribbon.  In fact, we noticed a number of them in various places and on different buildings and signs in Kingman.  Of course my curiosity came alive.  It turns out that it is the communities way of showing support for the Arizona Light It Blue initiative.  This initiative is in recognition of the healthcare workers and first responders supporting Arizonans during this challenging time. The City of Kingman has joined in this initiative by lighting up the main city complex with blue lights, and putting blue ribbons on many city properties and various signs.

During its operational life this caboose was in transcontinental pool caboose services and accumulated over 2.5 million miles by the time it was retired in 1986

I believe the most interesting thing to note, though, about this caboose is how it ended up behind the engine.  Saturday, May 9, 1987 1,200 people took rope in hand to move the nearly half-million pound locomotive 30 feet forward to its new resting spot.  Supposedly, it took only 10 seconds to move the massive engine the 30 feet forward.

This is one of two identical benches in the park.  No, you can’t roll them away.  They are welded to steel plates that form the base for them.  I have to say I thought they were a really original and creative use of old railroad wheels.

This monument caught our eye as we traveled about Kingman.  It had a plaque in front ot it.

Once again my curiosity came alive.  A bit of digging on the internet revealed what happened:  It was 25 years ago, on July 5, 1973, that a propane tank car being off-loaded in Kingman, AZ, caught fire, resulting in a explosion – that killed 11 Kingman firefighters and one civilian.  In addition to the 11 firefighters and one civilian killed, three other firefighters were burned by radiant heat from the blast – two from Kingman and one from the Hualapai Valley Fire District. Two police officers and 95 civilians (a crowd of about 2,000 had gathered across the street from the fire when it first started) also suffered burns from the radiant heat. More than $1 million in property damage was reported.

What caused the fire?  Again I discovered that:  At 1:30 P.M., workers began to connect the hoses to the rail car to start the off-loading process. During such an off-loading procedure, liquid lines are attached to the two liquid valves in the dome cover housing at the top of the rail car. Vapors are collected and routed into the vapor space of the tank. After all connections are made, the valves are opened slowly at first so as not to trip the excess flow valves. Connections are routinely checked for leakage and the valves fully opened when no leaks are present.

Two men were involved in the off-loading operation that day. As the off-loading proceeded, one of the men detected a small leak in one of the connections. Connections were typically tightened by striking them with a non-sparking brass-alloy wrench. These workers, however, used an aluminum-alloy wrench.

Despite their efforts to tighten the connection, the leak continued. The liquid connection was once again struck with the wrench. That’s when a fire erupted. It is thought that a spark was created as the wrench struck the steel fitting, because of magnesium being present in the alloy of the wrench.

So many lives lost, so much property damaged all because the wrong wrench was used by two workers who knew better.

So that was some of our recent discoveries.

Today it was much too hot to cook inside Elvira and too hot to barbecue outside.

The solution was to pick up a pizza and some home made root beer.  Though this was not the thin crust pizza we prefer, nevertheless, it filled the void in our tummies.

Lunch over we decided to play with the new Food Saver.  Its going to take some practice to be able to use it correctly but it is definitely a gadget worth having.

Another day is in the books on The Road of Retirement.  I don’t know if it was hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement but it was hot.  That’s OK, we’ll just stay holed up in Elvira until the heat breaks and we go back to something more reasonable.  Do we still like it out here?  Yup.  Do we still want to live in the Southwest?  Yup.  One more trip to the East and this area will be our home base.

Thank you for joining us today.  We always appreicate your company and comments.  See you tomorrow.

These are the voyages of  Elvira and it’s two intrepid travelers.  Our continuing mission: to explore as many new states as possible, to seek out new acquaintances and make new friends, to boldly go where we have never been before.

See you on down the road!