Read Online Ghost Towns of Route 66 by Jim Hinckley - Free Book Online Page B

small farm by Baltazar Jaramillo and his family in 1868. In time, the isolated farm became a small community, and in 1919, a post office opened.
    Jack Rittenhouse notes that the population in 1946 was listed as 128 and that the town consisted of a café, a garage, a couple of stores, and a curio shop. He also notes that the town had “declined somewhat.”
    Today, the word
declined
is an apt descriptor for San Fidel. The village consists of a small chapel, an art gallery in an old building, a bar, and a tumbledown garage. Just west of town are the remains of a former Whiting Brothers station.
    Correo is located south of Interstate 40 at exit 126. The remainder of the towns in this section are on old U.S. 66 on the north side of Interstate 40, accessed at exit 117.
    Hidden Gems

    A n array of vintage Route 66 remnants peppers the old road from San Fidel to the Arizona state line. In the old mining town of Grants, the darkened neon of the Franciscan Lodge and the Lux Theater, and the refurbished sign at the Grants Café, all hint of a time when travelers on the double six were as important to the economy as uranium from area mines.
    Prewitt, Thoreau, Iyanbitoall, and Manuelito have long and colorful histories, but Route 66 literally placed these isolated trading posts on the map. Jack Rittenhouse, in his 1946 guidebook, notes that Prewitt was “A small community, including several railroad siding shacks and Prewitt’s Trading Post. Gas station here. No tourist accommodations in Prewitt.”
    Of Thoreau, Rittenhouse says, “Thoreau Trading Post and Beautiful Mountain Trading Post here; gas and garage. Thoreau itself lies off of US 66.” Interestingly, this description is quite similar to that given in the 1927 edition of Hotel, Garage, Service Station, and AAA Directory.
    In Thoreau today, the Red Mountain Market and Deli masks—through a series of additions and an updated façade—a tangible link to the very infancy of Route 66: Johnnies Café. The café dates to the late 1920s and was initially little more than a twenty-by-forty-foot shed with a wood-burning stove for cooking and heating water, a counter with a couple of stools, and four small tables.
    An interesting historic footnote is found in Herman’s Garage at the junction with Highway 371, the road to Thoreau. Erected in Gallup in 1931, this prefabricated, steel-frame service station was moved to its present location in the mid-1930s.
    Today, ruins, faded murals, and other ghostly remnants are the dominant features of this stretch of highway. Against the backdrop of beautiful Western landscapes, these appear as sets in a photographer’s paradise.

    Prices stuck at thirty-one cents per gallon on a pump in Thoreau provide an excellent reference point for when the last car stopped at the station.

    Herman’s Garage hints that in quiet Thoreau, the curtain between past and present is a very thin veil.

ARIZONA

    The Two Guns mural may be a re-creation, but it is an apt monument to one of the most enduring legends on Route 66.
    The beautiful Canyon Diablo Bridge gave rise to the quintessential Route 66 tourist stop that was Two Guns.
    T HE GHOST TOWNS OF R OUTE 66 in the Grand Canyon State are a diverse lot of mining camps and railroad towns, rough-and-tumble cattle towns and tourism meccas, with two lanes of asphalt linking them all.
    With Flagstaff as a median, the ghost towns in the eastern part of the state are largely the remnants of trading posts turned highway service centers. These, as well as the ruins of tourism outposts, such as the isolated Painted Desert Trading Post, are a photographer’s paradise because each is framed by truly stunning Western landscapes.
    In the western half of the state, you will find the longest uninterrupted stretch of Route 66 in existence. This time capsule section of the highway—peppered with the steepest grades, the sharpest curves, and quintessential Western ghost