Route 66 in Arizona 1926-Present.    

Introduction:

    Route 66 has occupied an interesting position in the life of the United States and Arizona for a little more than the last 75 years.  The road was at its inception  the embodiment of modernity, nothing less than a new and self directed means of travel across a good portion of the United States. It also became the poster child of what was wrong with automobile travel in the 1950's and 60s. Now Route 66 is a symbol of a better and simpler time in American history and life. Route 66 was not only a success at enabling road travel by Americans, but also a victim of that success by creating deadly traffic issues, and congestion in towns and cities through which it past. These problems slowed travel, and emphasized the dangers of automobile travel to the point that the only alternative left was to create a new highway system both separate and superior to the original. Today Route 66 embodies travel before the modern interstate highway systems, and has come to represent the value of traveling America's older roads. Not only for where these roads go, or how they get you there, but for what you see and experience along the way.

Brief History of Route 66 in Arizona:

    In the formal sense, Route 66 came into being in 1926. That wasn't when construction began or ended, it was when Route 66 was "declared" and laid out over the patchwork of existing local roads that formed the budding road network in America at the time. For Arizona then, Route 66 did not represent the creation of anything new as much as the formalization of the old roads before as being part of a new route. In other words, in creating the interstate Route 66, very little if any new construction was the immediate result on the ground. This means that the very first version of Route 66 was an amalgamation of local roads in their original (and often unimproved) conditions.  Most of the road especially out of city limits was unpaved, and met no one standard of construction (i.e. width, road texture, architecture, etc.).

    Across Northern Arizona, Route 66 assumed the appearance of the older local roads including the Lupton-Holbrook highway, the Holbrook-Winslow highway, the Winslow-Flagstaff highway and so on. By 1926, most of these roads had been "upgraded" to the standards of the Arizona Engineer's Office ⁽¹⁾. These pre-Route 66 roads themselves constitute quite a history of road building and community linkage. These roads stretched state highway money to the point that simply grading them on great occasion constituted road building or road maintenance. Crews and equipment had to be dispatched out along the roads in the cities and towns at the roads terminus points. Highway maintenance was done with crews assigned to particular sections of the road, and those sections took on the character of the men who performed the maintenance. In many ways this resembled the model for rail road maintenance- a logical model for highways to adopt at the time.

    In Northern Arizona, there were places where the roads which would become Route 66 deviated little over time. Other sections of the road would be subject to frequent, and bold changes as funding and technology permitted. The Ash Fork grade west of Williams was one such place. Because of water issues on the grade, the original Ashfork-Williams highway was frequently washed out, and because of the challenge of getting logging trucks up and down the grade, the road took a  very serpentine course that was while twisty, not steep. Over time Route 66 made three different alignments up the grade, and the older Ashfork-Williams highway also tried several alignments, and construction methods to remain open and passable year round. The ultimate realignment came with I-40, a straight, steep road straight up the canyon.

    Other alignment and construction changes were the result of other issues. On the Oatman-Needles highway, the wrong alignment was built because of confusion between the Engineer's Office and the contractor. Along the  Peach Springs to Kingman road, both the Santa Fe Rail Road and the Engineer's Office elected to realign their respective routes- in part to reduce the number of at-grade crossovers. Unfortunately neither entity contacted the other, so their new alignments came into conflict ⁽²⁾.

    Generally we can identify between 3 and 4 different periods which resulted in either construction improvements to Route 66, or realignments. The 1926 period has well been discussed above, and then there are realignment periods of the 1930s, and 1940. We also begin to see the shift towards I-40 in the late 1950s and 1960s. The purposes of these alignment changes were meant generally to shorten the route, and remove hazards from the older alignments. 

  Effects of Route 66 on Northern Arizona:

    Route 66, much as the Santa Fe Railroad helped define and shape the development of towns and cities of  Northern Arizona that they passed through.  The initial 1926 alignment naturally went town to town as a function of following the existing roads, then passing through those towns as their "main street". It also must have been a comfort to early automobile travelers to find themselves in "civilization" after spending (in some cases) hours grinding along rough dirt roads across vast expanses of the wide open spaces. As this symbiotic relationship developed, towns and cities spread themselves out along the road. We can see this in many Route 66 towns (perhaps Gallup, N.M. is the grandest example where Route 66 is just over 10 miles long in the Gallup city limits), but we see it especially in Arizona towns and cities along the road. This elongation East and West was an attempt to catch the traveler, whether for gas, repairs, lodging, food, or other tourist related activities spread towns out incorporating Route 66 into their main streets and business districts.  This would stand in contrast to railroad based development where merchants tried to locate stores and services as close to the station as possible. This period of both physical and economic development is perhaps the most colorful and creative. Businesses exploited every conceivable niche, and while one might argue the quality of the products or services available, one couldn't deny the individuality, color and variety. It was this growth that both created Arizona's Route 66 towns, and ultimately played a role in their bypass. Naturally as towns grew along the road, there was greater need for traffic control along Route 66 in towns. The increased need to control speed, or stop or direct traffic, slowed the rate of vehicles all along the road. This helped to create the impetus to "bypass" towns altogether, especially those with many traffic lights.

    By the 1960s, I-40 a new, divided highway began to supersede the older Route 66,  and by the 1970s major bottlenecks along the road (like Albuquerque, N.M.) were bypassed. By the 1980s all that were left were the smaller towns- Kingman was bypassed by 1981, Seligman not long after and the last bypass in Arizona was placed around Williams in 1986.

    The bypass period further changed Northern Arizona town growth patterns. Now, instead of spreading out along the sides of the road, towns grew out to the freeway off ramps (much like to earlier railroad inspired growth). This in turn caused the main street portion of these towns to contract, and in many cases decay. A secondary phenomenon was the type of businesses that took over at the off ramp city limits: the arrival of national chain restaurants, gas stations, and convenience stores that put a generic face  to every town along the highway. Towns in Arizona like Flagstaff and to some extent Kingman were big and diverse enough to shrug off the bypassing of their main street. Other towns like Holbrook, Seligman, and Ash Fork were gravely wounded.  In examining basic Census data for the period of 1950-1990, we can see clear examples of this. While the counties that Route 66 passed through (Apache, Coconino, Mohave, Navajo, and Yavapai) all experienced relatively large growth rates 1990 over 1950 (221% for Apache Co., 403% for Coconino Co., 1,097% for Mohave Co., 263% for Navajo Co., and 431% for Yavapai Co.), the individual towns and cities along the route faired very differently.  Of the cities large enough to land in the decennial Census for the years of 1950-1990 (Flagstaff, Holbrook, Kingman, Williams and Winslow) only Kingman and Flagstaff show consistent growth over the period (380% and 598% respectively). For Holbrook, Williams and Winslow, there is a distinct interrupt. Holbrook's population growth over the period is 200%, yet its population peak was reached in 1980. For Williams, growth has been fairly flat with the 1990 population being only 17% higher than the 1950 one. Like Holbrook, Williams experienced its population peak for this period in 1960. For Winslow,  population grew by about 42%, and while highest in 1990, suffered a decline from 1970-1980. Seligman and Ash Fork never were large enough to enter into Census data as cities remaining below 2,500 population across this period ⁽³⁾. While there are many factors at play in this time period, one cannot ignore the bypassing of all of these cities and towns in the 1970s and 80s.   

Route 66 Today:

    Route 66 exists today, but in a sort of limbo state.  It provides an alternative route of travel quite effectively in a number of localities (and in the case of the Seligman-Kingman cut off is the only road through to Peach Springs, Truxton and other communities), yet to attempt to travel the original route (where findable) as a rational option to I-40 is if not impossible, impractical. Clearly, just as Route 66 impacted the original growth of towns and cities along path, today we see those towns long since bypassed by I-40 are once again playing Route 66 as an effective way of calling tourists off of the Interstate, and using the old road as a justification for renewal. This renewal takes several form: creation and investment in "historic" districts,  re-establishment of tourist oriented business including restaurants, motels and trading posts. Finally we even see the use of Route 66 as a theme and destination for vacationers and travelers.  Part of the wonderful irony in this is that part of what helped make bypassing Route 66 so attractive was the terrible tackiness that made many stretches of the road a true eyesore. Remember that the efforts during the 1960s for the beautification of highways, were largely accomplished by tearing down billboards, but also with the realignment of earlier and more "decorated" stretches of the original road. Today those "veterans" of the old highway are now subjects for recreation or preservation.

Footnotes:

(1). Some pieces of the road met even higher standards. The Flagstaff-Angell highway which crossed federal land had been made in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and was wider, and featured drainage and culvert work, that much of 1926 Route 66 lacked.  There is a brief essay in the Seventh Biennial Report of the State Engineer to the Governor of the State of Arizona, 1926, Phoenix, AZ. p. 33

(2). The trials of Western Arizona road building are generally detailed in the biennial reports of the State Engineer's Office. See: the Fourth through the Seventh Biennial Report of the State Engineer to the Governor of the State of Arizona,  1918-1926. See: The Sixth Biennial Report of the State Engineer to the Governor of the State of Arizona, 1924, Phoenix, AZ, pp. 174-5

(3) DECENNIAL CENSUS POPULATION OF ARIZONA, COUNTIES, CITIES, PLACES:  1860 TO 1990   http://www.de.state.az.us/links/economic/webpage/popweb/decennials.html

Bibliography:

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