Gleeson Jail & Art Car World

I’m a member of the Southern Arizona Region of the Porsche Club of America and I organized a club tour for Saturday February 25, 2017 traveling from Tucson to Douglas, Arizona. The obvious benefit of setting up a tour yourself is in choosing specific items of interest to you. The main items I selected on this tour included some of the old and some of the new: the Gleeson jail in the old mining ghost town of Gleeson; the historic Gadsden Hotel in Douglas; and Art Car World just a couple blocks from the hotel.

Twenty-four members had registered for the tour, a respectable number for the eclectic selection of sights, but some members were from further south in Sierra Vista so we planned to meet them in Tombstone and continue our path to Douglas from there. The driving conditions couldn’t have been better: sunny and clear. Leaving at 8 AM, our Tucson group ran a direct path on I-10 from the Triple T Truck Stop to Benson and then on to State Route 80 into Tombstone.  The timing was perfect. We pulled into the parking lot on the east side of town and were greeted with waves from the others already there. After a brief break, clear directions were distributed to everyone so each car had a copy. During the obligatory safety meeting I covered the usual points but added a special note of caution for the Tombstone-to-Gleeson section:  Be alert for cattle in the road. During my research of the Gleeson Road route using Google Earth’s Street View images of 12/10/2016, I noticed that the Google car images covered only 3 miles of the road. The last image was a very nice shot of several bovines in the middle of the road. I assume the driver was under Google orders to turn back so as not to endanger any wildlife. As lead car of the group, I would be scanning ahead for any such hazards, but we wouldn’t be traveling under any Google directives.

After the safety meeting, refreshed and prepared, we piled into our 14 fine examples of German engineering and design and formed an impressive line along 6th Street to Fremont Street. Exiting the eastern end of Tombstone on Fremont Street, we turned left onto Camino San Rafael. One mile later a right turn onto Gleeson Road started our winding path through scenic countryside that was home to some of the wildest times in Arizona’s Old West history. Gleeson Road was paved only in the last two years, but it has too many blind turns to lure most traffic from Davis Road to the south, so on this clear, sunny Saturday, with not one cow encountered, the road was all ours.

Twenty minutes later the old abandoned mines of Gleeson came into plain view and, just past the Gleeson cemetery, we turned right onto High Lonesome Road where the jail is located. We were greeted with a freshly painted sign declaring “Welcome Porsche Club” that owner Joe Bono had created for our visit. There was enough room behind the jail for us to form a horseshoe-shaped arc of Porsches encircling the rusted, bullet-riddled carcass of an old car sitting in the dirt.

We met Joe in front of the jail and he was happy to answer questions we had about Gleeson and shared wonderful stories of the colorful characters who made up its history. Joe was born in Gleeson and his father owned the barely-still-standing Bono General Store and Saloon across the street. Much work has been done to restore the jail to its current condition after decades of neglect and vandalism. The structure has been fortified and the “1910” and “Jail” signs faithfully replicated to match photos from the time it began service. The inside has been transformed into a museum housing photographs of former residents and all manner of artifacts associated with life as it was when Gleeson thrived with 1000 inhabitants.

We explored the jail, the inside of the old Bono saloon with its colorful mural, and the jail tree. Several others ventured off to explore the remains of the hospital and school close by. The jail is the only structure to be rescued from the scattered remains of this once busy social center.  After a group picture and many thanks to Joe, it was time to knock the dust off our feet, climb back into our cars and head toward Douglas.

We made one last quick stop on Gleeson Road to look at the roadside marker commemorating Soldier’s Hole, a watering site in the late 1880s. Up in the sky were high-flying flocks of Sandhill cranes, annual visitors to the Sulphur Springs Valley.

Turning south onto US Route 191 at the small town of Elfrida we continued our trek to Douglas. We arrived safely at The Gadsden Hotel and received a friendly greeting from Anel and Florencio Lopez, the new owners of the hotel. Entering the spectacular lobby it is impossible not to be impressed with the old world glamor of the decor. Several large columns with ornate, golden capitals support colorful glass skylights and, at the top of the sweeping marble staircase, a beautiful Tiffany glass panorama of a desert scene in carefully selected hues of greens and blues stretches across lobby. The hotel is on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places and rightly so as the tour at the end of the day revealed its important role in historic land and cattle deals in the area as well as the many other kinds of deals that transpired in the rooms below. More about this tour later.

Soon we were seated comfortably in the Casa Segovia restaurant located just off the hotel lobby and treated to a satisfying lunch provided by the friendly staff. Joining us for lunch was the newly appointed City of Douglas Economic/Community Development Director, David Carranza. He welcomed our group and briefly explained his desire to develop Douglas as a destination for travelers interested in the Southwest and also to attract artists and build a thriving arts community.

And the arts community is what attracted us to Douglas on this tour. After the satisfying lunch we moved to the Brekhus Room of the hotel where we watched the movie “Wild Wheels” produced by Harrod Blank, owner of Art Car World in Douglas. Harrod is also featured in the film as art car owner and narrator. This movie perfectly described the many ways that art car owners are inspired to use their vehicles as a canvas to express themselves. And express they do – with all imaginable types of objects. Whether motivated by a simple zany impulse or a life-changing cathartic experience, the results are always interesting and thought-provoking. Judging from the responses of everyone during the show, it was a worthwhile glimpse into the fascinating world of art car culture.

After the film we walked the two blocks to Art Car World where Harrod met us outside. It was a special treat that Harrod conducted the tour of the nineteen art cars on display and shared the interesting stories behind each one. There were many questions from the group about the hows, whats, and whys of the cars’ creation which he answered with even more interesting information.

After we had seen all the cars some of us bought postcards and books on sale that he gladly signed. Then, unexpectedly, he offered a tour of the second floor of the building where we saw sunlight-filled living spaces and a community kitchen nearing completion for future resident artists. The Art Car World concept is not merely to provide a museum for the cars, but also to be a place where artists can live while working on their projects. This will certainly appeal to budget-minded artists looking to escape the challenges of a large city environment.

After many thanks to Harrod for a very entertaining visit, we left Art Car World and relaxed just a couple doors away in the patio of El Mitote, the licuado shop run by Keoki Skinner and his wife, Laura. The fruity shakes are served out of a small, yellow bus painted with palm trees and a large watermelon slice. A longtime resident of the area, Keoki is very knowledgable of the history and also runs tours to the adjacent Mexican border town of Agua Prieta. Sitting in the sunny patio sipping our shakes after a long day of sights and sounds was a perfect ending to our planned events on this tour.

We walked back to the hotel and, for the members who were staying overnight in The Gadsden, an unplanned item was added to our schedule. Hotel owners Anel and Florencio offered us a tour of the hotel to see some of the upper floors under renovation and to the basement where many decades of discarded and accumulated material had been recently cleared out. Everyone enthusiastically agreed to accept this offer. Although it was intended to be a 30- to 45-minute tour, over the next two hours Anel and Florencio told very interesting stories about their findings in the hotel and shared information that various people have passed on to them since they became the owners. The history of The Gadsden is so rich and the characters, some corporeal and others more in the spiritual domain, are so intriguing that a book should be written to capture it all. To some, the hotel tour was the highlight of the trip.

On this PCA-SAR tour through scenic southern Arizona we sampled quite a range of interests, from the history of the Old West to the current automotive creations at Art Car World. A sincere thank-you to the guides at every point in the tour for sharing their insightful and authentic experiences with our club to make it such a success!