IN the heart of the Arizona desert lies a town called Santa Claus, left abandoned for almost 30 years.
A Californian real estate agent bought the town in 1937 with her husband in the hopes of creating a place where Christmas would fall on every day of the year.
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Under its new owner Nina Talbot, the storybook town had become an incredibly popular tourist spot by 1942.
And despite the blistering heat of the Arizona sun, not far from Las Vegas – the Christmas-themed resort town did flourish for many years.
For those visiting overnight, a guest house in the town was renamed the Santa Claus Inn.
It served dishes like Chicken à la North Pole and Rum Pie à la Kris Kringle and a photo of Santa hung above the fireplace.
Talbot also added a North Pole, constructing the Santa-themed buildings around it.
The local post office was used by children who wanted to send letters to Santa ahead of the big day.
And parents could even return their children’s letters from there with a postmark from the man himself.
There was also a Santa’s workshop and a Christmas Tree Inn.
And of course, it wouldn’t be Santa Claus land without the grotto where children could visit Father Christmas all year round.
While Santa Claus did well for several years, Talbot sold her shares in the town in 1949.
She had wanted to expand it into a full blown resort town, but the only people living there were those with jobs in its festive attractions.
Eventually in the mid 1970s the festive town attraction closed down.
It was removed from the official Arizona state map and in 1983 it’s remaining owner listed the entire town for sale.
Tony Wilcox received an offer which he turned down, and appeared to stay in the town for years later waiting to sell it.
By 1995, all remaining businesses in the town had closed.
An American writer, Mark Winegardner, visited the town in 1988 and painted a sad picture of it’s almost abandoned state.
He described “burned-out Christmas lights and faded plastic likenesses of Old Saint Nick” scattered in the abandoned village.
“Two of the three buildings were padlocked; through their windows, encrusted with layers of sand and decade-old aerosol snow… I saw dusty, overturned fiberglass statuettes of elves and reindeer.
“The gift shop stocked no seasonal items. Its shelves were littered with flea-market knickknacks at antique-shop prices. Battered paperbacks cost a buck.
“On a stool behind the counter top cash register, a haggard, fiftyish man looked up from his circle-the-word puzzle and asked if we needed anything.”
By 2003, only ten people lived in Santa Claus.
And in 2004, people were struggling to even find it in the desert.
Over the following years the town became more and more sparse until 2022 when most of the buildings were removed entirely.
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Ellie Doughty
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