Ghost Towns of Route 66 (18 page)
Read Ghost Towns of Route 66 Online
Authors: Jim Hinckley
Lupton is accessed via exit 359 on Interstate 40, Houck at exit 348, and both Sanders and Chambers from exit 339.
As with Houck, the need for a post office in Sanders was not consistent. The post office opened in 1896 under the name Cheto, then closed a few years later. It reopened in 1932 as Sanders.
Rittenhouse said of Chambers that it “Consists of one small tourist court, 2 gas stations, Riggs café, and a few buildings.” And this little desert oasis was not immune to conflicted identity.
Charles Chambers established a trading post on the site in the mid-1870s, but the little station and siding was named after Edward Chambers, vice president of the Santa Fe Railroad, not the trading post owner. It was under Edward Chambers' name that the first post office opened in 1907 with Frank L. Hathorne as postmaster.
In 1926, the approval of a new application made it official: Chambers changed its name to Halloysite, after a mineral mined in the area. The name change was short-lived, though, and in 1930 a new postal application restored the original moniker of Chambers.
Early maps indicate several small towns perched on Route 66 as the original highway climbed into the Techni-color wonderland that is the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest, but in actuality, Navajo, Adamana, and Goodwater never were more than trading posts that offered the most basic of services. Likewise with the “towns” listed between Holbrook and Flagstaff. Of the exceptions, Winona and Winslow were the only ones to warrant a post office.
In his classic Route 66 anthem, Bobby Troup elevated tiny Winona to levels far higher than its importance or size warranted. It never did cast a very large shadow on that historic highway. Established as a siding in 1886 under the name Walnut, the name changed the following year to avoid duplication of another town, and around 1920, the small community was abandoned and the trading post relocated to its present spot along the realigned National Old Trails Highway.
Rittenhouse lists the Winona Trading Post, with its café, gas station, grocery store, and cabins, as occupying the lion's share of Winona. It was here in 1924 that the post office was established.
Two Guns and Canyon Diablo
Two Guns is an iconic Route 66 location with a reputation carefully crafted for tourists during the glory days of the old double six. The original establishment capitalized on the stunning majesty of Canyon Diabloâwhich was still spanned by a beautiful concrete bridge built for the National Old Trails Highwayâand the legend of “Two Guns” Miller.
A colorful character, Miller claimed to be an Apache. Legend has it that he killed a neighbor who shared the canyon, was acquitted when the jury ruled the act self-defense, and then went to jail for defacing the grave after a fit of anger led him to erase the epitaph “Killed by Indian Miller.” The Two Guns attraction evolved over the years to include a zoo with desert animals, a variety of manmade “ruins” built into the canyon walls, and Miller's cave.
Ironically, few tourists who stopped to see Two Guns realized that just to the north was a real Western ghost town, called Canyon Diablo, with a very violent history. Canyon Diablo began life in 1881 as a railroad construction camp for the bridging of the chasm. The camp grew into a small collection of bordellos and saloons with a well-deserved reputation for lawlessness. The town became a haven for unruly elements of society. Not surprisingly, there were numerous gunfights and at least two train robberies, plus the staging of an amazing three-week, six-hundred-mile chase of robbery suspects led by Bucky O'Neill, a larger-than-life figure who met his end as a Rough Rider in the Spanish-American War.
A fast-fading mural is among the last vestiges of a tourism gold mine built on the legend of Two Guns Miller.
The extensive ruins and the solid nature of their construction convey the importance of Two Guns to Route 66 travelers west of Winslow.
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE CAMEL CORPS
O
N THE ROAD FROM SELIGMAN
to Kingman, vestiges of Route 66 blend seamlessly with those of the territorial era and the period of modern rediscovery. Fittingly, one of the ghost towns on this stretch was born to meet the needs of the Route 66 traveler, and another was a frontier-era mining town that survived by morphing into a roadside oasis for the modern traveler.
The road west from Seligman rolls across the wide Aubrey Valley, past the ruins of Hyde Park (promoted by signs that read “Park Your Hide Tonight at Hyde Park”), past Grand Canyon Caverns with its iconic towering green dinosaur, through the center of the Hualapai Indian Reservation at Peach Springs, past the 1927 Osterman Service Station, and into Truxton.
The town of Truxton is a relatively recent phenomenon, dating to 1950. The nearby springs that provided the name for the town, however, have a cultural history that spans centuries. In 1775, Father Garces met with a clan of Hualapai at the springs. In 1851, Captain Lorenzo Sitgreaves camped at these springs during his explorations; likewise with Lieutenant Edward Beale in October 1857.
Lieutenant Beale, famous for his explorations testing the viability of camels for military transport in the desert under orders from Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, named the waters Truxton Springs after his mother, Emily Truxton Beale. The northern Arizona road surveyed by Beale became the path followed by the railroad in the 1880s, then the National Old Trails Highway, and finally Route 66.
Clyde McCune cofounded the town of Truxton. In an interview with Jon Robinson for
Route 66: Lives on the Road
, McCune describes the town's origins:
The Department of the Interior had been talking about building a dam across the Colorado River at Bridge Canyon, and the reasonable way to get to that from Highway 66 was the take off there from Truxton.
The road would have gone up to the reservation and then taken what we call the Buck and Doe Road out to the canyon. That's the reason we set up our business there in 1950.
Route 66 is accessed by taking exit 139 on Interstate 40, Crookton Road, just west of Ashfork.
The recently refurbished Frontier Café and Motel neon sign and mural stand in stark contrast to the dusty, worn remnants of Truxton's other roadside survivors.
Cowgill's Market in Truxton captures the essence of classic Route 66 with the ruins of a vintage Ford, a colorful mural, and a shaded place to rest out of the desert sun.
Jim Hinckley
The large sign at Cowgill's Market feed barn leaves little doubt that the main street in Truxton is Route 66.
Jim Hinckley
The dam never materialized, but the Truxton Garage opened by McCune and Don Dilts prospered. In fact, it proved so prosperous that Dilts soon opened a service station and restaurant next door.
In rapid succession, other entrepreneurs followed suit. Soon, service stations, motels, restaurants, and garages crowded the shoulder of Route 66 in the wide valley at the head of Crozier Canyon. With the opening of Interstate 40 and the bypass of this section of Route 66 on September 22, 1978, Truxton rapidly began to regress to its pre-1960 origins.
Today, the little town dwarfed by cinematic Western landscapes maintains the slightest of pulses with the Frontier Café and Motel and its refurbished neon, a bar, Cowgill's Market, and a garage/service station that still meets the needs of Route 66 travelers, area ranchers, and the residents of Peach Springs.