Historic sites in Jerome

Jerome State Historic Park is the Douglas Mansion, built in 1916 by James S. Douglas on the hill above his Little Daisy Mine, and now a museum about the town, the mines and the family. Photographs, minerals, a film, and a three-dimensional model showing the town with its workings underneath. There is a picnic area with the whole Verde Valley below. Open 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily, $10 for adults 14 and over, $5 for ages 7 to 13, free under 7.

Gold King Mine & Ghost Town is up Perkinsville Road, out of the town proper, and it is the opposite experience: outdoors, sprawling, full of machinery, vehicles and buildings, and unpolished in a way some people love and others do not expect. Wear shoes you do not mind ruining.

The site nobody charges you for

The town itself is the third historic site and it is free. Jerome is a National Historic Landmark in its entirety: a copper town of fifteen thousand people at its peak, down to a few hundred when the mines closed, built on a 30-degree slope with the buildings stacked over each other. Walking the streets is most of the visit, and the Sliding Jail, which moved downhill over the years, is the piece of that everyone photographs.

The Jerome museums page covers the Mine Museum on Main Street, which is $2 and run by the historical society, and is the best two dollars in the valley.

Practicalities

Park once. Jerome charges $5 for the day in its paid lots, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., by card at a kiosk. The free option is the 300 Level lot on Perkinsville Road with a shuttle into town on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. The streets are steep and narrow and circling for a space is not something anybody does twice.

Almost nothing is step-free. That applies to the town as much as the buildings.

The drive up is switchbacks with a long drop, fine in daylight and unforgiving in the dark or the wet.