Arco, ID

I have just spent my second night in Arco, Idaho. Never heard of it? Not surprising. Arco is a town of 1000 people, in the middle of 900 square miles of high, lava-rock desert in central Idaho. It achieved brief fame in the mid-1950s for being the first town in the world to be powered by nuclear energy, and a couple years later, being the site of the first nuclear meltdown. It has clung to its defunct title of "Atomic City" and the town seems to have not changed or developed much since then.

Why have I spent two nights in the town of Arco? Is it simply because I was tired of driving and wanted a break? That it was my birthday? Was it the huge thunderstorms rolling over my head, that I didn't want to drive through? Or was there something about the town? I would say, a little of all of these. My campground was comfortable, reasonably priced, had full hook-ups, hot showers, and Wi-Fi. And something about the town itself, the fact there wasn't a single chain restaurant (fast food or otherwise), and even the gas stations, though bearing a chain-name, had something strangely local about them.

The town is unselfconsciously falling apart, as small towns with little funding have and do across the country. Like Crawfordsville, many of the downtown buildings are empty, or contain shops that simply stopped opening for business some time ago. The streets are made with a course-gravel asphalt, and like many towns, are riddled with huge potholes that Baby Jessica could have been lost in. They have been carefully filled with the same gravel the asphalt was made from, which overfills the holes and margins between the street and the earth on either side. Both visually, and as a driving experience, the whole town seems to be in flux between being paved and not.

What is charming about Arco, is what it has left is quaintly authentic, good and bad at the same time. There are several restaurants, ranging from road-side stands and make-shift drive-thrus to sit-down diners, all painted shocking colors like lime green, red striped, teal blue, and preparing dishes such as pizza, BBQ pork ribs, fried chicken, all with a side of an Idaho potato (food that was good enough tasting, but sat heavily in my stomach). There are a surprising number of motels, painted in similar colors, with advertising signs that match their 1950s erection dates. This is one of the only towns in a long stretch of lonely roads, and the only town in any distance from the Craters of the Moon National Monument, and the businesses of the town have taken note of and advantage of this location.

My favorite part of Arco, is the graffiti. Arco seems to have (or had in the past) a rogue muralist, painting landscapes on any building or concrete barrier untended. None of them are signed, and there are no markers explaining them (as there are throughout the town, discussing important historical facts). They are sketchy mountains, streams, deserts, trees. They look vaguely like they are a part of this landscape, but seem to have conveyed it as though through a fine linen, softened and idealized for viewing pleasure. Some have slogans about the store or the town in dark, carefully lettered text that I am not sure was the same hand as the murals.

The only graffiti with the educational, historical marker explanation, are the two-digit numbers painted all over the mountain above the town. I would have preferred no marker, as my imagined explanations were so much more interesting than the truth. My version is the one I will tell (my blog, after all). A simple Wikipedia search will give you the town's explanation, if you really want it.

In the '20s, when the town was undergoing a slump and the threat of abandonment was eminent, (there may even have been a big-business mobster trying to buy the town for a song) the citizens gathered together one night in their tiny, lava-rock town hall, and made an oath to each other to stick it through. When the mobster road into town the next day, he saw they had painted a ridiculously large "A" on the mountain, and the number "20," and he knew they meant to stay. Each year, the elders of the town trekked to the mountain to paint the year, proving to the mobsters of the world that Arco was still there, still hanging on. In the '50s, it seemed they would last, and then the atomic power fame came to them. But the world had its doubts. Would the radiation kill them in their sleep, Arco disappearing silently into the night? There was renewed vigor to prove themselves to the world, to prove they had been there (here) and were still there. Hence, the numbers are still being written to this day.

I'm not sure what will happen when they get to 2020. Will they cover the mountain with duplicate numbers?