A tour of the remains of Sundad, the most mysterious ghost town in Arizona

The United States has many ghost towns, especially in desert areas where mining operations once took place.

The remains of a secret military base where the US tested a light weapon in World War II
Johnson Canyon, a dangerous railroad line abandoned in 1959 in Arizona

The state of Arizona is one such desert region. There, in the middle of a desert, there once existed a small town called Sundad. It is unknown when it was founded, although it is believed to have appeared during the gold rush of the 1920s. There are hardly any records about the town and there are no photos of when it was inhabited. The town has rarely appeared in the local media.

On September 10, 1953, when Sundad was already a ghost town, a US Air Force Boeing KC-97 Stratotanker tanker collided in mid-air with a Boeing B-47 Stratojet bomber nearby. All seven KC-97 crew members managed to bail out, landing near Sundad and being rescued there a few hours later by helicopter.

In the 1950s, a married couple settled in Sundad in a one-room miner’s shack. The couple made headlines in the Arizona Daily Sun on Dec. 8, 1966, when Lee R. Bailey, 77, died, leaving his wife, Velma, 58, alone to stand by her husband’s body for six days because they had no telephone and she couldn’t drive. On the sixth day, a friend drove by.

Velma was the last inhabitant of Sundad. Almost nothing remains of the town except for some stone inscriptions and a few ruins. Today Sidetrack Adventures has published an interesting video exploring this place, which is now considered the most mysterious ghost town in Arizona:

You can see some screenshots from the video here. This is the long dirt road leading to Sundad. It is in good condition, but the final stretch, reaching the village, is more deteriorated.

Near the village there is an abandoned railway line, now used to store old freight cars that are no longer in use. The line of cars is over a mile long, but they have left a passage to cross the track.

The stone inscription at the entrance to Sundad. In addition to the name of the village, we see a star and an anchor on the left. What is an anchor doing in the middle of the desert?

An old water tank riddled with bullet holes. It is one of the few remains that indicate that people once lived there.