If you liked The Flintstones cartoon, you’ll love this. (Or it will ruin your childhood, depending on how you like to remember things.) While the syndicated cartoon went off the air nearly in 1966, the town of Bedrock still remains–in Arizona, of all places. (Fun fact: the original show was meant to take place in Stone Age Southern California, and included plays on actual place names.)
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The location’s natural landscape adds to the prehistoric theme.
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The Rubbles’ house, with Betty. The buildings, which include the characters’ houses as well as some Bedrock shops, are all made of brightly-painted concrete, and probably keep pretty cool in the desert heat.
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And the Flintstones’ house, with Wilma. The figures in front of the houses used to play recorded dialogue when a pressure plate was activated by a tourist, but these have been disabled.
Bedrock City, near Valle, Arizona, is a life-sized mock-up of the Flintstones characters’ hometown of Bedrock, created as a roadside attraction for those en route to the Grand Canyon on Highway 180. Through it’s brightly painted and still operational, it’s largely been forgotten by all but those in the area.
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Today, the houses have layered timelines. They’re fake, concrete houses made to be Stone-Age versions of early 1960s homes, only this place was built in 1972.
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Other buildings include the grocery store, barber shop, and the police station, seen here. They all have Stone Age-themed puns in and around them as well.
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Like the houses, Fred’s Diner harkens back to a different time, but not the Stone Age. Note the sign for five-cent coffee. Those were the days!
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Bedrock City also still features some attractions, including some dinosaur-shaped playground equipment, a movie theater that plays Flintstones episodes, and some goats. You need goats!
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Sadly, the golf carts, once available for tourists, but they’re no longer operational and now only exist for show.
Today, Bedrock City still attracts visitors, but more than 40 years in the desert has made it look a bit more unintentionally Stone Age than was perhaps the original idea.
People do still come and roam through the houses, and can even camp there. It’s open 365 days a year (unlike its twin location in Custer, SD, which is only open in the summer, due to the weather) and souvenirs, food, and activities are still available. The place is definitely a little weird, but it has a nostalgic charm to it.