Salome, Arizona is only a short layover for us. Located on US 60, a two lane road that connects Phoenix to L.A., Salome is a dusty little town of about 1600 souls. Founded in 1904 by Dick Wick Hall and Charles W. Pratt to take advantage of the rail line running nearby, today the town is home to the Western Sky Airpark where people have built huge storage sheds for their private planes and have adapted a sort of lean-to building attached to the sheds to live in. There's the Desert Palms RV and Golf Resort, where the owners are slowly adding to the nine-hole executive course to expand it to an eighteen hole golf course. It's a nice course and a nice campground, although we stay at one of our affiliate membership parks on US 60. The area is surrounded by the Harcuvar and Harquahala Mountains and there are miles of ATV and hiking trails, as well as the Alamo Lake State Park to the northwest. There are geocaches in the area, but a 4 wheel drive vehicle or ATV is recommended for many of them.
As you enter Salome you'll see a sign that says "Salome--where she danced--AZ. The story goes that Mr. Pratt's wife, Salome, took off her shoes to walk across the sand which was so hot she "danced" across the desert and thus the town's name was born. Of course, this is all from Dick Wick Hall who was a publisher and the town humorist. Mr. Hall also created the Salome Frog in a poem, part of which read "I'm seven years old and I cannot swim- so don't blame me for looking grim. .....And folks haul water in railroad trains, while I sit and dream of the summer rains ......You can't kid me about this desert land, where Salome danced on the red hot sand........They say it rained, and it may again.......I'm an old bull frog - and dang my hide, I can't swim because I never have tried......
Sometimes you just have to look below the surface before you decide to pass a place by.
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