The Thing? is an Arizona roadside attraction hyped by signs along Interstate 10 between El Paso, Texas, and Tucson, Arizona. Teaser ads, such as The Thing? What is it? and Mystery of the Desert, entice travelers along this sparse stretch of desert highway to stop, just to find out what the mysterious Thing? might be. Such billboards are similar to signage seen in the South as drivers approach the South of the Border near Dillon, South Carolina and Rock City near Chattanooga, Tennessee.
There is alot of things that you will find there including bathrooms and a Dairy Queen… You will find souvenirs galore and western wear too… I have to say the gas was terribly high considering all… If you find your way down there… Make sure you gas up in Willcox or Benson… Better yet Tucson if you can…
We ended up making a game out of trying to get pictures of the full boards for The Thing… This kinda reminded us of the old Burma Shave Billboards... I don’t remember them myself, but I remember the history of them…
Not only was there The Thing, we also stopped off at Picacho Peak and took pictures of Nickerson Farms… This use to be a special place for our family… When we went to Tucson from Phoenix we liked to visit my in laws and we would stop off at Nickerson Farms and eat there… Now it is nothing more than a boarded up and run down restaurant… One day I’m sure it will be taken down… When you went in there you could get rock candy and local honey… Sitting outside of Nickerson Farms is an Adult Store… When I took a picture of the signs, that showed up and was not how I thought it would turn out… Not sure if that was funny or not… But it does show how the times have changed… To think that was once a place where our family spent time and looked forward to on our trips is now an adult book store… It isn’t in the same building, but close enough…
Also outside of Nickerson Farms is an old train that was custom made… There has been some tagging going on with it, but it is still pretty cool looking for the most part… It’s sad that people have to destroy things by tagging them…
Nickerson Farms History:
Nickerson Farms was an American roadside restaurant franchise that existed between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s. It was started by a former Stuckey’s franchisee who did not agree with that chain’s rules and regulations. Nickerson Farms had as many as sixty restaurants located along Interstate highways, mainly in the Midwestern United States. Each Nickerson Farms location had a full-room restaurant, with a gift shop. Honey, collected from on-site beehives, could also be purchased at Nickerson Farms stores. [1][2]
The majority of Nickerson Farms locations sold Skelly gasoline and other petroleum products.
Here is a pretty cool page that shows more pictures of the Nickerson Farms we went too… It is listed in some Ghost Town pages…
Senseless Ramblings of the Mindless 