Motoring along a two-lane highway toward the remote southeastern corner of Arizona, red hills and red oaks pepper the high desert terrain. The temperature starts to cool during the ascent into the Mule Mountains. Just five miles short of the Mexican border, where Highways 92 and 80 meet by a graveyard, a pink and green neon clock marks the Shady Dell. It’s a night’s stay, a destination, and a trip back to times when hauling cross-country offered more than endless Taco Bells and generic Best Westerns.

The Shady Dell is located in the town of Bisbee, which bustled at the turn of the last century with copper mines. Now its former-grandeur-turned-artist-enclave oozes quaint Victorian charm, with the Brewery Gulch full of Old West memorabilia and galleries. Visitors climb the thousand staircases, descend old mine shafts, check out nearby Tombstone, hike the City of Rocks in the Chiricahua Forest.

—Roberta Cruger