Old Miners' Day

Old Miners’ Day starts at 9 in the morning, when Chloride’s bakers set out their goods at the Corner Bake Sale. The Mohave Journal placed the table in 2022 at the corner of Tennessee and Second Street. Explore Kingman reports that the Pineapple Upside-Down Cake and the Pecan Pie are the bestsellers. The Chloride Chamber of Commerce’s events page states it outright: “every parade begins with our famous bake sale!” Raffle tickets go on sale the same morning. Prizes have included hotel stays, gift certificates, and sometimes cash.

Chloride lies four miles east of Highway 93, 25 miles north of Kingman and 80 miles south of Las Vegas. The turnoff comes about 21 miles up 93 from Kingman, past milepost 53, onto Mohave County Highway 125. That road becomes Tennessee Road and runs straight into town. According to Explore Kingman, some families there have lived in Chloride for generations.

The celebration belongs to the Special Events Committee of the Chamber of Commerce. It is one of the committee’s two major fundraisers; the other is the St. Patrick’s Day parade in March. All proceeds go to the committee. Old Miners’ Day usually falls on the third Saturday in October. The Chamber’s September 2026 calendar billed October 17 as the “50th Annual Old Miners Day Parade.” That same month the Chamber announced that, because of a conflict with Kingman’s Route 66 Fest, the 2026 celebration had been moved to October 24, 2026.

The parade down Tennessee Avenue

The parade starts at noon. In the Mohave Journal’s words, “Round about ‘High Noon’ the always zany Old Miners’ Day parade wanders down Tennessee Avenue.” The 2022 lineup included antique and custom cars, floats, marching units, Shriners, animals, gunfighters, equestrians, Chloride’s VFW Post 2190, and motorcycles. Anyone may join on the day by signing up at the Town Hall on Payroll Avenue between 9:30 and 11 a.m.

There was more to the 2022 day than the parade. A horseshoe tournament began at 10 a.m. at the county park on 2nd Street. Vendors and live music filled the porch of the Mineshaft Market, Chloride’s general store, which also serves as the town’s visitor center. After the parade, visitors eat at Yesterdays Restaurant, which the Journal called Yesterdays Saloon and Steakhouse on 2nd Street. Snacks come from the Mineshaft Market or the food vendors. Parade awards and raffle prizes are handed out at the Town Hall, at 2:30 p.m. in 2022. The prize table that year held an autographed book about Roy Purcell, gift certificates, hats, hotel stays, food certificates, pocket knives, and signs.

Gunfights at Cyanide Springs

Gunfight reenactments run at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. in Cyanide Springs, next to the Community Park on Elkhart Avenue. In 2022 the troupe was the High Desert Drifters, and a demonstration by Wayward Archery followed the 1 p.m. shoot-out. Wayward Archery also had a booth that year where visitors could sign up for archery lessons. Nearby, the Mohave Prospectors showed visitors how to pan for gold, and the Mohave Rock and Gem Club explained Arizona ore.

Cyanide Springs is an “Old West” town that locals built from lumber taken out of the Golconda Mine. The Chloride Historical Society calls the Golconda one of the richest mines in the area. The Society also answers the obvious question about the name: “Don’t worry, there is no cyanide here - Chloride was never a gold mining area.” Four of the cabins there were real miners’ cabins that once housed miners’ families. They now serve as shops and workshops, and their rents support the Society, which receives no government funding. The Society notes that all the buildings need repairs.

The Jim Fritz Museum also stands inside Cyanide Springs. Fritz was a long-time Chloride resident who, with his sister, fed the miners from their tiny kitchen. He lived to 95. After his death his home was dedicated to the townsite, and its rooms are kept as he and his sister left them. The collection holds artifacts from Chloride’s past going back to the 1880s. The Silver Belle Playhouse, where the Society holds its meetings, is also full of memorabilia from Chloride’s glory days, according to the Journal.

Silver chloride and the Tennessee Mine

The town is named for the silver chloride found in abundance in the surrounding mountains. Miners first found silver there in the 1860s, and Silver Hill is named for its rich ore deposits. The Mohave Journal counts more than 70 mines just east of town in the Cerbat Mountains, worked for silver, gold, zinc, copper, and turquoise. The Chamber’s history page gives over 75 working mines and lists lead and molybdenum as well. By that page’s account, Chloride once had over 2,000 residents. It had hotels, a bank, a pool hall, barber shops, saloons, restaurants, several churches, and a hospital. A railroad spur carried ore and passengers to Kingman.

The Tennessee Mine was the most productive. It produced zinc and lead into the 1940s. When the mines closed, the miners and their families left, and Chloride became almost a ghost town. Some of the mines are now privately owned and others are controlled by the federal government.

Pieces of that town remain. The 1917 jail stands on Merrimac Street, one block north of Tennessee. The post office at 2nd and Tennessee was once a pool hall and bar, and a billiard ball rack still hangs above its sign. The Journal also points out an old train station, old gas stations, and metal artwork in residents’ yards.

The Journey on the rock

The Grand Marshal of the 2022 parade was Roy Purcell. In 1966 he began painting “The Journey,” known locally as the Chloride Murals, on a 2,000-foot rock formation in the Cerbat Mountains. The Chamber says Purcell described the work as a journey from the “darkness into the light.” The site had been a favorite picnic spot in the 1940s. Long before that it was an important place for the Chloride Band of Hualapai, whose petroglyphs can be seen directly across from the murals.

The two Chamber pages disagree about when the murals were repainted. The murals page says Purcell repainted them in 2005 with help from his family, adding new images and using automobile paint. The visitor page says he repainted them with his son in the 1980s, also with car paint. Purcell’s books explaining the images are sold at Yesterdays Restaurant.

The murals are about a mile and a half east of town on a dirt road whose condition depends on rainfall and on when it was last graded. The Mineshaft Market can give directions and report on the road. To get there, drive east on Tennessee Avenue, cross the cattle guard, and follow the signs painted on the rocks.