A rare treat

Rich Dinkela, fresh off his prize money of free gasoline for a year from Phillips 66, found a way to get to the long-abandoned Painted Desert Trading Post, on an old and forlorn stretch of Route 66 in eastern Arizona.

This old section of the Mother Road has been rendered inaccessible by a gate for several years now. Dinkela said he found another way there. He wouldn’t reveal the pathway, but said it required 10 miles of driving on terrain that required a four-wheel drive vehicle.

A good history of the Painted Desert Trading Post can be found here. It was built in the early 1940s, and has probably sat abandoned for at least 40 years.

2 thoughts on “A rare treat

  1. May have to retract the previous post. There is an interesting discussion going on over at the Historic Route 66 Forum about this very subject. Southwig reports that he received a letter from the Navajo Nation stating that is was not on their land.

    DeLorme maps show the reservation extending all the way south to I-40 but Google Maps shows the reservation ending well north of there.

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