7 Playfully Peculiar Towns In Arizona

Peculiar is not necessarily positive. Add "playfully," however, and you get some unique towns in Arizona. Rather than repelling visitors with creepy locals and localities, as is the case with many peculiar towns across the country, certain AZ communities are playfully peculiar, drawing tons of tourists with gunfight reenactments, "energy vortexes," pink-hued buttes, Bedrock homes, haunted hamburgers, burro biscuits, and slopeside stairs. Learn where to find these amazing oddities in this am-AZ-ing state.

Tombstone

Tombstone is less a town and more a giant game of cowboys and outlaws. Sure, it has regular residents with regular lives (approx. 1,300 of them), but it is annually overrun by about half a million tourists and daily energized by multiple reenactments. Actors playing Wyatt Earp, Morgan Earp, Virgil Earp, Doc Holliday, and other Wild West legends trade blank cartridges at the O.K. Corral, reenacting the real 1881 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Many tourists also get into the fray, as Smithsonian magazine reported that "it's not unusual to see 150 Wyatt Earp impersonators strutting about in long black frock coats or drinking in Wild West-themed saloons like Big Nose Kate’s." This old-timey debauchery culminates at Helldorado Days, a hella-huge hootenanny held on the third Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of each October.

Sedona

Sedona is a small city carved into Red Rock Country. Its spectacular sandstone terrain backdrops dozens of movies, notably westerns like Broken Arrow (1950) and 3:10 to Yuma (1957), generating the nickname "Little Hollywood." However, Sedona has another, even more unusual nickname: "New Age Capital." The sandstone monoliths that drew filmmakers also draw New Agers seeking aliens and energy vortexes. As such, several Sedona tour companies take seekers to supposedly supernatural hotspots, such as a sacred Hopi site called Kachina Woman Rock and a butte-borne church called Chapel of the Holy Cross. Fatigued from offbeat sightseeing? Visitors can rest at an offbeat McDonald's. To match its pastel scenery, Sedona has the world's only McD's with teal arches.

Kayenta

Sedona's McDonald's is not the only offbeat fast food joint in Arizona. Kayenta, a town in northeastern AZ's Navajo Nation, boasts a Burger King with a mini-museum inside it. While waiting for your Whopper, you can tour an exhibit about the Navajo Code Talkers, whose uncrackable Navajo-language ciphers helped America win World War II. After filling up on history and hamburgers, walk it off in nearby Monument Valley, which, like the Sedona area, is a red rock paradise preserved on the big screen. See the several-hundred-foot buttes that John Ford used in such films as Stagecoach (1939) and The Searchers (1956). Better yet, see them from John Ford's Point. Kayenta is considered the gateway to Monument Valley, offering convenient access to this iconic landscape and its tribal park, which the Navajo Nation manages.

Valle

Think of a classic animated series set in a rocky environment that, though not confirmed, could be prehistoric Arizona. If you thought of The Flintstones, you did what Francis and Linda Speckles did in 1972, when they opened Bedrock City near the Grand Canyon in the small town of Valle. After the Speckles sold Bedrock, it became part of Raptor Ranch, whose raptors are birds of prey, not dinosaurs. Thus, you can enjoy falconry demonstrations in between sliding down a sculpted sauropod and touring the houses of Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone. If you had visited Valle a few years earlier, you could have also explored the Planes of Fame Air Museum, but it closed in 2023. Now you will have to "settle" with a tour of the Grand Canyon following forays into Bedrock City and Raptor Ranch.

Jerome

A mining community that boomed in the late 1800s and then busted in the early 1900s, Jerome almost became a ghost town. But its mine-oriented oddities attracted enough tourists to alter its fate. In recent years, Jerome has been visited by around 1 million people, who explore sites such as the Sliding Jail, which, like much of the town, was built on the side of a mountain. Unlike much of the city, however, the jail is said to have slid 225 feet down the mountainside. Another notable site is the Douglas Mansion, which once belonged to a mining mogul and now serves as the centerpiece of Jerome State Historic Park. If hungry after touring this near-ghost town, head to the Haunted Hamburger, which will sate your appetite as a ghostly gastropub.

Oatman

In name alone, Oatman is sufficiently peculiar. Add mining relics, Wild West flair, curiosity shops, Route 66, and a drove of feral donkeys, and Oatman out-weirds nearly all AZ towns. Visitors sow their oats at the Oatman Jail and Museum, where Old West criminals were allegedly kept; the Oatman General Store, which has sold everything from Indigenous artifacts to dragon and fairy figurines; and the Historic Route 66 Sign, where the donkeys above, which are colloquially called burros, tend to congregate. Oatman's burros descend from those used for mining and are so numerous that they reportedly outnumber residents. Many shops offer alfalfa (not oat) cubes to feed the burros, while the burros' droppings are collected and thrown great distances during the Burro Biscuit Toss.

Bisbee

Bisbee is a playfully peculiar town in Arizona. After all, comedian Doug Stanhope chose Bisbee as his personal Pee-wee's Playhouse. Aside from Stanhope's colorful, chaotic compound, the community's curiosities include the Copper Queen Hotel, a historic miners' hub now known for its haunted rooms, themed around celebrities like Harry Houdini, and The Shady Dell, where old trailers double as trendy inns in this hand-me-down haven. You might have to access such sites using the Bisbee Stairs, which function much like roads on the town's semi-arid slopes. Since desert critters dominate Bisbee, try not to fall into any holes—unless you are visiting in April. That is when Alice in Bisbeeland opens a giant rabbit hole as the "most extreme 3-day cosplay event in the United States." Among its Alice-approved activities are the Mad Tea Party, the Cosplay Parade, and the Queen of Hearts' Beheading.

Arizona is a place for playfully peculiar prospecting. Now, instead of uncovering gold, silver, and copper like the prospectors of yesteryear, you can find a historic gunfight site in Tombstone, a red rock chapel in Sedona, a Burger King museum in Kayenta, a Flintstones park in Valle, a sliding jail in Jerome, a feral donkey herd in Oatman, and a comedian's compound in Bisbee. Where will you strike first?