Route 66 Road Segments

Arizona Route 66 has its roots in the ancient past with aboriginal trails that linked trade partners from the Great Plains to coastal California. Used for centuries, these trails followed gentle terrain and led to water sources. After the United States acquired lands in the Southwest from Mexico in 1848, Congress sent exploratory parties to the area to assess its resources and search for transportation routes. Between 1857 and 1859, Lieutenant Edward Fitzgerald Beale traversed one such route, when he constructed a wagon road between Fort Smith, Arkansas and the Colorado River along the 35th Parallel, a relatively level terrain with a mild climate. In the final decades of the 1800s, the Beale Wagon Road guided thousands of settlers, ranchers, military personnel, and others west. Railroad engineers followed the path of the Beale Road when surveying for the 1883 transcontinental Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. Towns and settlements soon grew up along the railroad, and roads linked the towns' main streets. Route 66 stems from these foundations.

During the Territorial years from 1863 to 1912, Arizona had an inadequate road system. Individual counties had authority over road construction but generally lacked the tax revenues or organization to carry out an effective road construction and maintenance program. Arizona became a State in 1912. The advent of the automobile in the early years of the 20th century revolutionized the concept of road building in Arizona and ushered in a boom in road construction activity. In the second decade of the 20th century, coast-to-coast and regional highways developed, largely due to the influence of the Good Roads movement. The Arizona Good Roads Association published a tour book with road maps in 1913 to publicize the State's roads. In it, the publishers proclaimed that, "... Arizona has ... the best natural roads in the Union," but also conceded that, "... some difficulties are encountered in the remote sections." These difficult sections included the future path of Route 66.

Years passed before travelers in the northern part of Arizona saw any substantial improvement in the roads. Arizona could not keep pace with the enormous demand for roads by a public increasingly fascinated with the automobile, and counties did not have adequate funding or organization to take on the responsibility. After Congress passed the Federal Aid Road Act (also known as the Bankhead Act) in 1916, Arizona received $3.7 million. Dirt roads were graded, cinder surfaced, and widened, and new bridges and culverts were constructed at canyon and river crossings. The road across northern Arizona, known as the National Old Trails Highway, was part of a transcontinental route that linked segments of old trail. The United States Government considered several routes to pave as part of the nation's first system of Federal highways, and promoters of the Old Trails Highway eventually convinced the government of the route's worthiness leading to its designation as part of U.S. Route 66 in 1926. Some 400 miles of Route 66 passed through Arizona, and in 1926, virtually none of it was paved.

Arizona, as elsewhere, experienced an explosive increase in automobile use during the 1920s, and as traffic increased, engineering standards were no longer adequate for the heavy road use. The outmoded 1920s roadways needed rebuilding, straightening, and reengineering. Paving of Route 66 began with the main streets of towns, which helped fund the projects, making Route 66 the "Main Street of America." Arizona received more than $5 million of National Recovery Administration highway funds in 1933 as part of President Roosevelt's sweeping unemployment relief programs, and by 1938, Route 66 was completely paved from Chicago to Los Angeles.

As the economy improved in the late 1930s, Americans began to take vacations by automobile, and the scenic wonders along Route 66 were a major destination. Arizona offered many attractions: National Parks like Petrified Forest and the Grand Canyon, cool mountain vistas, and the Navajo reservation. America had a love affair with American Indian culture, fueled by popular "Cowboy and Indian" motion pictures. Western movies conveyed a stereotyped image of Indian tribes, one perpetuated by business owners along the way. Although teepees and war bonnets associated with the Plains tribes were not authentic to Arizona, they became the banner of Route 66 found in curio shops and on neon signs and billboards.

After World War II, tourism, growth, and development boomed in Arizona. Post-war prosperity brought an unprecedented increase in automobile travel to the State, and to Route 66 in particular. Towns once again buzzed with activity, and cash registers rang the chime of good times.

Although Route 66 received constant maintenance through the years, traffic congestion worsened, especially in the small towns along the way. One in seven accidents in Arizona occurred on Route 66, giving rise to another, less flattering, name for the road: Bloody 66. The realignment of some sections straightened out particularly dangerous curves--the famous Ash Fork Hill in 1950 and the Oatman grade in 1951 are two notable examples. Nevertheless, the highway was obviously out of date and too congested.

The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, appropriated billions of dollars to build interstate highways. The new system of interstates would conform to new design standards that included limited access, a minimum of two traffic lanes in each direction, and bypasses around every city and town along the way. Work soon began on the new highway in Arizona, now designated Interstate 40. It took more than a decade and over $375 million before much of it was open to traffic. By bypassing several sections of winding road, Interstate 40 reduced the mileage across Arizona from 376 miles to 359 miles. The final section of the entire national length of Route 66 to be bypassed was a six-mile stretch through the town of Williams, Arizona on October 13, 1984. This momentous occasion was marked by a ceremony in Williams in which Bobby Troup sang his famous song "Route 66."