Kingman is a city in and the county seat of Mohave County, Arizona, United States. According to 2006 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the city is 27,271. The nearby communities of Golden Valley and Butler bring the Kingman area's total population to around 40,000. The city is a flag stop for twice daily Amtrak service (once eastbound and once westbound).
Lt. Edward Fitzgerald Beale, a Naval officer in the service of the U.S. Army Topographical Corps, was ordered by the War Department to build a government-funded wagon road across the 35th Parallel. His secondary orders were to test the feasibility of the use of camels as pack animals in the southwestern desert. Beale traveled through the present day Kingman in 1857 surveying the road and in 1859 to build the road. The road became part of U.S. Route 66 and Interstate 40.
Kingman, Arizona, was founded in 1882. Situated in the scenic Hualapai Valley between the Cerbat and Hualapai mountain ranges, it is known for its very modest beginnings as a simple railroad siding near Beale’s Springs in the Middleton Section along the newly-constructed route of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. The city of Kingman was named after Lewis Kingman who surveyed along the Atlantic and Pacific right of way between Needles and Albuquerque. Lewis Kingman supervised the building of the railroad from Winslow to Beale's Springs, which is near the present location of the city of Kingman.
On July 5, 1973, Kingman was the site of a catastrophic BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion) which killed 11 firefighters. The explosion occurred following a fire that broke out as propane was being transferred from a railroad car to a storage tank. This explosion has become a classic incident studied in fire department training programs worldwide.
The Arizona State Archives in Phoenix, has 24 cubic feet of original material including civil case material and photographs relating to the "Kingman Explosion."