Ever heard of the city of Kingman?

I first landed into US at Los Angeles and then we drove down to Dallas, where I currently live. Enroute we visited several cities, tourist places and interesting and unheard of destinations. One of the places is Kingman sited close to the Grand Canyon. Kingman's claim to fame is not its proximity to Grand Canyon. For one thing, the city is sited on the historic Route 66, this is the city where 36,000 gunners of the US Army were trained for World War II in the Kingman Army Airfield. After the war in 1946 this training base was converted to a storage depot with the main role of destoying thousands of airplanes and melting them into aluminum ingots. Kingman was one of five sites chosen for the task which took 2 years to complete and yielded 70 million pounds of aluminum. In all 7,000 airplanes were destroyed or melted in the city. The few planes that escaped destruction are either flying in private clubs or in the museum as World War II memorablia. The entire history has been well recorded in the Kingman Army Airfield Museum in the town.

Founded in 1882, Kingman is sited in the ruggedly beautiful Hualapai Valley between the Cerbat and Hualapai mountain ranges. Founded mainly as a railroad habitations near Beale’s Springs along the then newly constructed route of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, Kingman has come a long way and currently acts as a base for tourists visiting Grand Canyon and has over 50 inns, hotels, motels, bed & breakfasts, campgrounds & RV Resorts.

The museum I liked most is The Mohave Museum of History and Arts. Promoted in 1961 with the sole aim of preserving what is remaining of the heritage of Northwestern Arizona and to display it to public. The museum is a private owned not-for-profit organisation and is funded by revenues derived from visitors, memberships and contributions. The attached library has a fairly vast collection of documents, manuscripts, maps, and photos about Mohave County and the Southwest.

Some of the objects on display at the Mohave Museum





Every city in America, even suburbs, have their own official website, which acts as their main marketing platform giving all the information and inviting people to visit the place, relocate to the community etc. This concept of having websites is slowly developing in India there are nic.in sites for every district and city but then they are simply not alluring enough to motivate people to visit.

The official website of the city of Kingman says that its urban population in 2000 was 20,069 and an estimated 15,431 living outside city limits, making it a total of little over 35,000. For such a small population the city is quite large. Something I have liked about the US is the facilities installed by the goverment in every small town. The opportunities available for every individual to make it big is the same irrespective whether one lives in New York or Kingman. I am quite sure most Americans wouldn't have heard of Kingman, lesser would have visited it. For a population of 35,000 odd there is almost every facility one could need to live there. An airport, golf course, chamber of commerce, visitors bureau to promote tourism, sports complexes, museums, schools and even a court. Even trash collection is managed by the city council and done professionally leaving the streets squeaky clean. It makes me wonder when such facilities will be created in small towns in India.