Day 9 - Holbrook AZ to Needles CA

Table of Contents

	Google Map Track Log
	YouTube Video
	Jackrabbit Trading Post, Joseph City AZ
	Meteor Crater Trading Post, Winslow AZ
	Two Guns - Route 66 Attractions In Ruins, Winslow AZ
	Twin Arrows Trading Post Ruins, Angell AZ
	Historic Route 66 , Parks AZ
	Delgadillo's Snow Cap Drive-In, Seligman AZ
	Truxton Station, Truxton AZ
	Hackberry Store, Kingman AZ
	Cool Springs Station, Oatman AZ
	Shaffer Spring
	Oatman AZ
	Elevation Changes During the Day
	Comments
	Other Blogs About This Trip

Google Map Track Log

YouTube Video

Jackrabbit Trading Post, Joseph City AZ

Texan trader James Taylor opened the Jack Rabbit Trading Post in 1949, after moving to Joseph City from Albuquerque. The building had first belonged to the AT & SF railway. Later it was the Arizona Herpetorium (exhibiting snakes). Jack Taylor set the snakes free and opened the Jack Rabbit Trading Post in 1949.

The Trading Post is still in operation and is a convenience store which sells curios and Route 66 collectibles.

It is named after a hare that is quite common in the area, and all of the Western USA, the Jack Rabbit.

The black-tailed Jack Rabbit (Lepus californicus) or American desert hare is very common in the western U.S.

It can grow to weigh 6 lbs. (2.7 kg) and measure 2 feet (61 cm) long. It eats the local grasses, shrubs and trees. It does not hibernate. Coyote, foxes, wild cats and raptors prey on it.

Meteor Crater Trading Post, Winslow AZ

Meteor City is not a city, or even a town or village; it is what remains of a once popular dome shaped Trading Post on the south side of US Route 66 (just west of I-40's Exit 239) in Coconino County in central-eastern Arizona: It is located on the old alignment of Route 66.

I remember stopping here the early 90's before I knew anything about Route 66.

Two Guns - Route 66 Attractions In Ruins, Winslow AZ

The desert stretch of I-40 between Holbrook and Flagstaff features several exits that aren't towns, just abandoned Route 66 businesses.

One of them is Two Guns, a Wild West theme park, with a grafitti ravaged entrance sign and faded western characters still visible on an old storage tank. What's unique about Two Guns is that its ruins are built atop the ruins of an older, equally ill-fated place named Canyon Diablo, a genuine Wild West ghost town. Canyon Diablo's great claim to fame was that its residents once dug up a dead gunslinger, gave him a shot of whisky, then posed for pictures with the corpse.

According to Mother Road lore, Two Guns was originally a trading post, opened in the 1920s by Earl and Louise Cundiff, and a zoo built by "Injun Miller," who was not a Native American. Injun (whose real name was Harry) eventually shot and killed Earl, then later was attacked by one of his caged mountain lions. When Route 66 was rerouted to the other side of Canyon Diablo's canyon, the business folded.

All that remains of Two Guns/Canyon Diablo is a sign reading "Mountain Lions" (its most prominent feature), some crumbling stone buildings, a set of gas pumps that appear to have exploded, and the ruins of the "Apache Death Cave" built by Injun and the old Route 66 concrete arch bridge over the canyon (Both are too dangerous to explore; please don't try).

Twin Arrows Trading Post Ruins, Angell AZ

Like many an icon of Route 66, the Twin Arrows Trading Post has certainly seen better days. Situated on the side of I-40 in Arizona, the giant, yellow twin arrows still remain, standing out as a beacon to bored drivers, but the store and diner have fallen into disrepair.

Built-in the late 1940s as Canyon Padre Trading Post, the store soon changed its name to Twin Arrows, seemingly inspired by the nearby town of Two Guns. It was then that the iconic wooden arrows were built, planted in the parking lot to guide motorists to the trading post's doors. The post included a gas station, gift shop, and a Valentine's diner.

Unfortunately, the creation of a nearby interstate led to a swift decrease in road traffic and combined with the changing cultural tastes that were moving away from kitschy roadside attractions, the trading post fell into decline. Twin Arrows operated under different owners as best it could until 1995 when it was finally abandoned.

Currently, the land is owned by the state of Arizona, while the buildings are owned by the Hopi tribe, nestled off an exit across the interstate. In 2009, volunteers and the Hopi cleaned up the wooden arrows but the tribe has not made any other efforts toward restoration of the trading post or diner. The abandoned buildings have become a canvas for graffiti artists, adding to the site's eerie charm. 

Historic Route 66 , Parks AZ

Delgadillo's Snow Cap Drive-In, Seligman AZ

Travelers praise the Snow Cap's burgers, malts, and fish tacos, but the place is best-known as Ground Zero for Route 66 road food pranks. It opened in 1953, and the comedy developed over time thanks to owner Juan Delgadillo, a practical jokester who turned the eatery and its menu items into a running series of gags

Signs advertise "Cheeseburger with Cheese," "Dead Chicken," and "Sorry, We're Open." There's a fake door to get inside, and another door with fake doorknobs. The Snow Cap's slightly used napkins and sucky straws are comedy staples, and customers are routinely sprayed with colored yarn from ketchup and mustard squeeze bottles. It's all from the "harmless joshing" school of comedy, and anyone who just wants a burrito should probably go somewhere else.

The Sno Cap is revered by Mother Road devotees for another reason: while sitting under its awning -- perhaps contemplating the air-conditioned comedy outhouse in the Snow Cap's garden -- Angel Delgadillo, Juan's younger brother, decided he would lead the fight to save Route 66.

Juan is long gone, but his jokes survive, carried on by condiment-squirting younger generations of the Delgadillo family.

Truxton Station, Truxton AZ

This is a classic Route 66 motel with flamboyant signage and all! The Frontier was built by Alice Wright in 1952, and it included a café and the motel which had 9 units and an "I" shaped layout.

According to Michael Wallis and Marian Clark, Alice Wright believed in the supernatural, and when a clairvoyant told her to drive 400 miles from Los Angeles and open a Café she did it, and opened "Truxton Café" and the motel exactly four hundred miles from her home.

In 1957 it was purchased by Ray and Mildred Baker (who owned the motel and gas station across the street). Th Barkers would later work actively in the rebirth of Route 66, through the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona.

Hackberry Store, Kingman AZ

Generously described as "ramshackle," Hackberry General Store has enthralled Route 66 pilgrims since Bob Waldmire reopened it in 1992 (Bob was a legendary Route 66er whose father invented the hot-dog-on-a-stick). The store, built in 1934, had been abandoned for 14 years, and Bob kept it looking that way. When Bob sold it to John Pritchard in 1998 it was with the understanding that John would maintain the store's dilapidated charm, and when John sold it to Amy Franklin in 2016, she agreed to do likewise. .ap Hackberry General Store, apparently held together by the rusting signs nailed to its exterior, is the only outpost of civilization for miles. Its gas pumps have been dry for decades, but it still has a real, working outdoor pay phone because there's no mobile service in Hackberry. Visitors, many from countries other than the U.S., crowd into the store to soak in the crumbly Mother Road vibe, tack their paper money and patches to the walls, and buy Hackberry General Store snacks, t-shirts, and refrigerator magnets.

A little of this "real" Route 66 goes a long way, and it's reasonable to assume that if the Mother Road were still lined with Hackberry-like places, this one wouldn't seem so charming.

Cool Springs Station, Oatman AZ

We were shocked to see this pristine relic sitting along an otherwise empty stretch of Route 66, at the entrance to the Black Mountains. Did isolation and a dry climate somehow preserve it?

Well, no.

Cool Springs Service Station had been a ruin -- nothing more than a blackened pile of rocks -- until 2001. That's when Ned Leuchtner, a real estate agent from Chicago, bought it and began its careful restoration, based on vintage photographs. The work was completed at the end of 2004.

Cool Springs Service Station was built in the 1920s and eventually had a cafe, a bar, and cabins. But Route 66 was bypassed in 1953, and the station was abandoned in 1964. Adding insult to injury, its ruins were blown up for the 1991 Dolph Lundgren/Jean-Claude Van Damme film Universal Soldier.

We're happy that Leuchtner spent his time and money to bring Cool Springs back from the dead, but please don't drive to this isolated spot with your fuel gauge on "E." Cool Springs may look like a gas station, but it only sells snacks and Route 66 souvenirs.

Update: The station closed briefly in the Spring of 2016, but it's now reopen with a new full-time caretaker, J. Barger, known to everyone as simply "J.B."

Shaffer Spring

While driving this arid stretch of Route 66, keep your eyes peeled for a staircase built into one of the cliffs. It leads to a secret spring bubbling with life, tucked out of sight along the most famous road in the United States.

A man named Shaffer created this hidden roadside wonder in the 1930s under the Works Progress Administration. While constructing the "Gold Road Section" that weaves between Gold Road Mine and Kingman, Arizona, he noticed water cascading down the cliff walls. To take advantage of the precious resource, he built a basin of stones at its base to allow the water to pool.

This minute, secluded oasis soon became a welcome refuge for the weary travelers and parched animals passing through. Because the water stems from a consistent natural source, the bowl remains full year-round. Locals frequently keep it stocked with goldfish (leading some to call it the "fish bowl spring"), and the snails clinging to its walls help keep the algae at bay so the water stays fresh.

Desert-dwelling animals like bees and burros still frequent the site to quench their thirsts. Humans, however, are less common. Only travelers who already know of its existence or those who happen to spot the stairs will ever stumble upon this secret spring.

Oatman AZ

Elevation Changes During the Day