I was poking around the net looking for anything about Gisela, Arizona, a town of minimal map dot size. For as many years I have driven north on the Beeline Highway from Phoenix to the high country of the Mogollon Rim, I’ve been curious abour the signs a few miles south of Payson pointing to “Gisela”.
It was 8 or 10 years ago there was even a billboard with “Town For Sale” — the sign is gone, and it’s not too clear if someone bought it or the seller gave up.
So on our latest trip up north, we headed 5 miles up a winding dirt road that crested and than dropped down to this scattering of various homes, trailers, stables, a farm or two huddled along Tonto Creek.
The stats suggest not much more than 500 call this place home. I had read years ago that there was a funky country store and bar here– and it took some effort to find it (the boarded up place in the photo).
So when looking through the scant bits og Googling Gisela, I became curiois there was a web design company listed as serving this burg. Could it be? From my visit, electricity looked like it might be a luxury there, could there be internet, and a need for web designers? And amazing, the same copany also offers custom web design for Star Valley, and about 25 otherr small towns, even Young — none of which are much in the vay of web design outposts.
But the page offering web design services to Gislea, was exactly the same as the 25 others, with just a town name swapped out. And they provide this all locally from Philadelphia, which is not a small town dot in Arizona.
But hey, I only spent an hour or so in Gisela, and may hev overlooked all of the web enabled enterprises.
Gisela Store
available on flickr
Small out of the way town south of Payson. This was the General Store and bar, closed for 3 years.