Discover Arizona’s Ghost Towns, Mines, Caves and Museums

Relive the Wild West at a ghost town, dig for fossils or go underground in a mine or spectacular caverns — family travelers will find plenty of reasons to travel in Arizona.

Visitors can step back into the 1890s when Arizona was in the middle of its own Gold Rush. Preserved and restored after years of abandon, Goldfield Ghost Town was once alive with more than 3,000 residents. The town today gives kids a glimpse of the old west as they pan for gold, ride a narrow-gauge railroad and watch a mock gun fight.

Gold wasn’t the only metal that made early settlers rich. Bisbee was a mining town, with copper mines active for a century until the 1970s. Put on a hard hat and headlamp to descend into the depths of Queen Mine, where former miners describe working in a copper mine. The interactive Bisbee Mining and Historical Museum explores how Bisbee played a role in America’s industrialization.

For more underground adventures, tour Kartchner Caverns, a vast cave system with immense limestone chambers studded with giant stalagmites and stalactites. In fact, you’ll see the world’s largest known stalactite here. In the Discovery Center are fossils of creatures that once inhabited the caverns.

Back to the surface, explore Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, located near Tucson. Two miles of paths lead through the desert botanical garden to a zoo, aquarium, natural history museum and art gallery. Half-hour Live Animal Theater programs and a Stingray Touch exhibit bring kids up close with wildlife, and younger kids love climbing through Packrat Playhouse.

If kids were fascinated by the fossils at Kartchner Caverns, take them to the Indian Gardens Paleo Site outside of Payson, where they can dig for fossils — and keep their finds. Millions of fossilized seashells and aquatic life were captured in the sands more than 300 million years ago when the area was underwater. Admission is free, and kids can keep the fossils to begin their own museums.