Sometime in the late spring or early summer, I visited the town of Clifton.
It almost qualifies as a ghost town and by that I mean that most of the town shops have been abandoned and a lot of the buildings have fallen down, but people still live there.
I always find towns like this sad, but especially a place like this when the surroundings are so beautiful.
It sits nestled in a mountain and it was built because of the mining that went on there and is still ongoing, albeit a little farther away in a neighboring town.
The first part of town has a railroad track that divides the main street, as you can kind of tell by the following pictures.
On one side there is the courthouse:
and neighborhoods...
On the other side are shops, including this hotel:
The old girl has changed quite a bit looking at a picture from inside the hotel.
So has the town.
You can see more pictures of what Clifton used to look like "
here".
The couple that owns the Hotel Reardon were kind enough to invite us in to take a look. They're in the process of fixing it up and they allow dogs, so if you're ever up the way and need a place to stay, they'd be happy to have you (They don't have a website, but their number is: 480-599-2819 :)
Farther down, on the same side as the hotel, are more houses, which we decided to walk alongside and take pictures.
I was pleasantly surprised that most of the homes were being restored and still had their old windows intact.
Moving on down the road, we came across the railroad station, which is still beautiful and well taken care of.
Even further down, there are a couple of main streets that are in disrepair and we couldn't figure out if they were part of Clifton or not, but we're assuming they are. They were mostly just streets of sad abandoned buildings:
Except for this church turned house:
All in all Clifton is still beautiful in it's own way and it looks like there are a few people that want the town to thrive once again.
I truly hope it does :)
xo
rue
