Ghost Town Ehrenberg Arizona - Romantic History of Old Ehrenberg

Like many slumbering ghost towns that once boomed with commerce and activity, Ehrenberg, Arizona is now a shadow of its former self. Once a bustling town of 5,000, its population had dwindled to 1,357 according to the 2000 United States Census, a small revival from its' lowest count at 500 souls.

The ghost town sits at an elevation of 305 feet and is located northwest of Exit 1 on Interstate 10 near the Arizona-California state border. Rock covered unmarked graves in the town's Pioneer Cemetery remind us of the deep sacrifices made during the Old West. 

The below reprint of the Mohave County miner and our Mineral Wealth article published on June 10, 1921 of an account by The Blythe Cal., Evening Review provides a unique insiders recollection of historic Ehrenberg:

*****

Fifty years ago there sprang up, like a thousand mushroom towns that characterized the west after the railroads linked it to the already established east, a booming mining center that held in its daily life all the richness, the depravity, the crudeness, and the ineradicable picturesqueness that is attached to the history of the vanished frontier - Ehrenberg, once a refuge for 5,000 pioneer souls, now is but a crumbling mass of adobe in the Arizona sun.

The traveler, making a slight detour as he follows the southern highway, glimpses its sandy skeleton blocked vividly against the blue sky. But he does not always know that once, within those same nondescript walls, lived the church, the school, and the homes of men and women who formed a fierce and gay little city that died, as they themselves, when the vivid spirit waned.

To see, to feel, and to love the history of such a landmark of the old West is the experience of a Jesus Daniels, and it is from this familiar pioneer of the southwest that much of the material for this account is gleaned. Thirty years a resident of the place, Mr. Daniels is indeed an historian to whom one ma turn for uncolored annals of Ehrenberg's brilliant days.

Upon the fall of La Paz rose the success of Ehrenberg. La Paz, which was the most important of the two cities, was started about 1860, and for ten years flourished with the phenomenal growth that has attended the entire development of the west. At one time it was event the capital of Arizona, but the government finally ordered the citizens to evacuate, as it was in the Parker, Ariz., Indian reservation limits. It was then that the La Paz populace moved to Ehrenberg, illustrating the rapidity with which western cities took root and bloomed. Founded in 1870, Ehrenberg increased to 5,000 inhabitants by 1872-73.

Some of Ehrenbreg's business men and their descendants are known to pioneers of the Palo Verde Valley, and there are residents of Blythe and other valley towns who recall no little of Ehrenberg history themselves.

The most important business men were Goldwater Brothers, who conducted a general store, Jack Swartz, proprietor of one of the leading saloons, and Abe Frank, brother-in-law of Jesus Daniels, who conducted a general merchandise business, ran a boarding house and was also the postmaster of the town. In its palmy days Ehrenberg boasted two large blacksmith shops that fattened on the then profitable business of the stage coach lines.

When Abe Frank moved to Yuma in 1883, he sent his brother-in-law, Mr. Daniels, to take his place in the Ehrenberg business. For many years Mr. Daniels held the mail contract, operated the general store and saloon and was one of the school trustees, but later he gave up these numerous duties to go into the cattle business.

Miss Mary Phost, who was the first teacher to come to the Ehrenberg schools, still lives at Yuma, and still teaches in the schools in that city. She is very old now and draws a pension for her teaching services in the neighboring state. The Goldwaters are now residents of Phoenix, while the Franks live in Yuma.

A city where every day and night saw enacted scenes of gold lust, where the report of a vengeful gun was a granted part of the day's occurrences, where the rant of the dance hall mingles with the chant of the Catholic church nearby - that was Ehrenberg. Asked to tell of one outstanding incident that made up the florid side of Ehrenberg's past life, Mr. Daniels gave up the job deprecatingly. Those were no highly colored and sensational farces that the cinema industry grew rich upon in its younger days. The candle in the beer bottle, the spinning roulette wheel, the nugget thrown in exchange for malaga - these were a very part of the genuine life upon which discerning movie picture directors built an art for having for its cornerstone the intense and often ribald life of the rugged West.

Ehrenberg was primarily the center of a gold mining district. Very little copper was mined there, and practically no silver. It is estimated by different authorities that some $17,000,000 in gold was taken from the La Paz mine, and countless wealth has also been obtained in the region near Ehrenberg.

The old stage line which made the daily trips from San Bernardino to points in New Mexico made Ehrenberg its chief stopping place - a factor greatly instrumental in the rapid settlement of the city. The coach was carried across the river on a big ferry rowed by several men. Many times, true to the spirit of those pioneer days, the stage was robbed in approved bandit fashion, but the government's close vigil of desperadoes resulted in the apprehension of many of them, who were duly sent to the penitentiary.

Ehrenberg came to grief about 1882, after a span of 10 years in which was condensed more red-blooded live than many a city experiences in several decades. Indian settlement which were stationed along the shores of the Colorado river became restless. The Red Man rose up against the inhabitants, and when two or three of the citizens were slain, the people began to move. By 1883 most of the business men had left, the last ones to forsake the city being Sam Wilson, Newt Smith and the Hecklers.

At the time Blythe began to settle there were still three saloons in Ehrenberg. For quite a while these few remnants of the better days were the only props in the little town's lagging existence, and when the state of Arizona went dry, they too closed, forcing the few remaining inhabitants to move across the river to Blythe.
Ehrengberg's history is a representative store of many a settlement in the West, whose auspicious location in a rich mineral field gave it a quick life and quick death.

As one wanders through the deserted city today, one wonders that a community so favorably regarded for a decade could be so utterly deserted. Every year adds to its measure of the loneliness to the place and strips the remaining walls of some relic of olden times. Not so long ago the treasure seeker might have gathered enough discarded household articles to set up a living place. A short time ago one found a roulette wheel still intact,orderly rows of seats in the old school house, and the picturesque walls of the two Catholic churches festively decorated in palm fronds and brightly hued pictures of the saints.

Today as one roams the deserted walls, one finds only the yellowed page of a lost account book, the battered metal of scales, or the rotting round of a chair. The passionate town withers. At hand, the cemetery, that is filled with graves whose weather beaten markers bear faint Spanish inscriptions and whose forms are piled high with stones to barricade the coyote's prowling, offers mute testimony of gay lives, many of which were cut short by swift and revengeful weapons.

Ehrenberg remains a sight-seeing place for the insatiable tourist, and it is indeed one of the most profitable and deeply interesting one that the Southwest has to offer.

*****

References:
Top Image: Ehrenberg town sign. (c) 2014 Diana DeLugan
Images: Library of Congress, public domain images
Widipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehrenberg,_Arizona