At Road's End

  In western Arizona lies the company town of Bagdad. Bagdad is a town of about 1,700 people that  lies literally at the end of the road. It is located at the very end of State Highway 96. The state maintained highway ends on the east side of town near the baseball and softball fields that are used by the local high school teams. Beyond that point, the street is maintained by the mining company, as is everything else in Bagdad. 
  The road into Bagdad, State Highway 96, is a very narrow and winding road where one can rarely travel more than 50 miles per hour. 40 to 45 miles per hour is the norm on this road. This highway does not have any banked curves, no shoulders, no guardrails and very few of the modern amenities one would expect to find on a highway. Basically, it is a dirt road that was paved, if that makes any sense.  It was once a long dirt road until sometime in the 1970s that was paved with no other improvements being made to it.
There is one other way into Bagdad by vehicle and that is on Lindahl Road. This road is only paved for 3 1/2 miles outside of Bagdad and then it becomes a dirt road that is very washboarded in places and impassable after torrential downpours or snowstorms higher up in the mountains. After Lindahl Road leaves Bagdad, it is still maintained by the mining company until it enters Prescott National Forest, at which point it is maintained by the Forest Service as
 Forest Road 68. About 50 miles northeast of Bagdad, Forest Road 68 connects with Williamson Valley Road, a county maintained road that provides a connection to Chino Valley, a town of 13,000 people about 10 miles away, or Prescott, a city of 50,000 that is about 18 miles away. At the intersection with Forest Road 68, the pavement on Williamson Valley Road ends.
  Leaving Bagdad on the main road, State Highway 96, it is 39 miles to the nearest road that will provide a connection to Prescott and 43 miles to State Highway 89, which is a busy road that was a federal highway, U.S. Highway 89, until September of 1992. Also four miles outside of Bagdad, State Highway 97 splits off from Highway 96 and winds 16 crooked miles to U.S. Highway 93, which is the main highway between Phoenix and Las Vegas. Despite that connection to a major highway, it is still 32 miles in one direction and 46 miles in the other direction to any type of traveler's services.
  Bagdad is owned and operated by Freeport McMoran, a mining company that bought out the more well known mining giant, Phelps-Dodge, in 2007. In turn, Phelps-Dodge bought out the original owners of Bagdad, Cyprus Bagdad Copper Company sometime in the mid to late 1990s, I am not exactly sure when.
  Bagdad is a very insular and isolated community and visiting this little mining town in the mountains is like a breath of fresh air because it is not commercialized like most towns today are.
In the next few emails, I will write more about Bagdad.