Two Guns

I had already been planning a road trip out west when Kaylah and Jeff invited me to their wedding. They got married at the ghost town, Two Guns, which was conveniently already on my road trip list (thanks to Kaylah, of course). After the short ceremony, JMP and I stuck around to explore the ruins and I can definitively say that it was the best wedding I have ever been to (and I don't see how any future weddings can possibly compete). 

Two Guns is located 30 miles east of Flagstaff, Arizona on the rim of Canyon Diablo. In 1878, it was the site of a mass murder when Apaches hid from their Navajo enemies inside of a cave on the site—a fire was lit at the cave's entrance and 42 people were asphyxiated inside. This cave, now called the Apache Death Cave, is still accessible by a rickety ladder but we were totally fine admiring it from above ground (and via Kaylah's badass wedding photos). The Canyon Diablo Bridge opened in 1915 and was used until 1938; in 1988 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1922, Earle and Louise Cundiff purchased the land and built a store, restaurant, and gas station. Three years later, Harry Miller leased the property from the Cundiffs and added a zoo, gift shop and post office, and began offering tours of the cave. In 1926, the highway that passed by Two Guns was renamed Route 66, and Miller shot and killed Cundiff during an argument (although Cundiff was unarmed, Miller was acquitted). 

In the late '60s a motel, tavern, new zoo exhibits, Shell service station and a KOA campground were added to the site. The service station burned in 1971 and the site has sat abandoned ever since. My favorite part of Two Guns was the kidney-shaped swimming pool, which is now covered in colorful graffiti.  

Two Guns is a great place to explore (or attend a wedding at) because you can travel through time via the ruins of all of its past lives. There are rumors that the site also contains buried treasure and more than one dead body, and the only person we saw while we were exploring was a (live) man slowly passing over the desert landscape with a metal detector.