Jerome commands big sky views from its mile-high perch on Cleopatra Hill: look out over red rock mesas and volcanic peaks...while standing above a network of 88 miles of mine shafts descending over 4000ft/1219m.

Founded in 1876, Jerome's population fell from its 1920's boom of some fifteen thousand to a dwindling fifty-something in the 1950's; it almost became a ghost town. Day-tripping visitors hungry for Old West ambiance keep it alive today in its post-copper-bust reincarnation. (Sedona is just up the road.) Plenty of haunted Victorian bricks remain, along with art galleries, jewelry designers, and saloons still frequented by leather-chapped regulars.

Mexican, Irish, Chinese, Italian and Croatian miners once climbed up and down these hilly streets; on weekends now, art-collectors, college kids, and bandana'd bikers stream into the town that 444 residents still call home.

(A ninety-mile drive from Phoenix, it makes for a great day-trip if you're in central Arizona. And just a few miles from Jerome are the well-preserved pre-Columbian hilltop ruins of Tuzigoot National Monument.)