David Lamb of Smithsonian magazine has written an excellent article about Route 66’s abandonment by the U.S. highway system and the Mother Road’s eventual revival.
It’s in the February issue, but you can read it online here.
The article focuses on Arizona — Angel Delgadillo and the small Route 66 town of Seligman, La Posada in Winslow, Frontier Motel in Truxton, and a few other places.
The whole article is worth reading, but this excerpt about Alan Affeldt and the rejuvenation of La Posada is amazing:
After three years of negotiation, the Santa Fe Railway sold them La Posada for the price of the land, $158,000 for 20 acres. The hotel was thrown in free. The trio moved in on April Fool’s Day 1997, shooing away some hobos, and set to work. Seven months later, La Posada reopened with five meticulously restored guest rooms. The new owners operated in the red for five years; sometimes they met payroll with Affeldt’s credit cards. They scrambled for grants and put everything they made back into the project.
Now the 53-room hotel is booked to capacity virtually every night. Its Turquoise Room is regarded as one of the Southwest’s top restaurants. The grounds are landscaped with towering cottonwoods and hollyhocks. With a paid staff of 50, La Posada is the largest locally owned employer. Winslow has awakened from a 50-year slumber with a revived downtown, new shops, sidewalks and streets.
“Architecture is what brought us here,” Affeldt told me. “But what Route 66 gave us was a built-in audience—the people going up and down the road for whatever reason: architecture, history, nostalgia. Having 66 on our doorstep made all the difference.”
The thing is, Route 66 is still moving up. The revival hasn’t even plateaued.
Brilliant article and how encouraging to see it is such a prestigious publication. Thanks, Ron, for posting the link.