LAKE HAVASU CITY, Ariz. — When Arizona executes prisoners, it uses lethal injection — not drawing and quartering, hanging or beheading, all of which have fallen out of favor since they were used with some regularity in Europe centuries back.

But for a brief period this week, the state will be simulating that gorier era, when the most notorious outlaws have their heads put on stakes and displayed for all to see. Red food dye will take the place of real blood, of course, and plastic mannequin heads will be used instead of actual skulls.

Forty years have passed since Robert P. McCulloch, an Arizona real estate developer with a penchant for pie-in-the-sky ideas, bought the actual London Bridge that once spanned the Thames, dismantled it, transported it halfway around the world and had it rebuilt, stone by stone, in this desert oasis near the California line....