Painted Desert Trading Post gets a new roof

The ongoing quest to stabilize the long-closed Painted Desert Trading Post building in eastern Arizona received a major boost last week when volunteers installed a new roof on the structure.

Workers — many with the Route 66 Co-op that owns the landmark — stripped off the porous and rotted old roof, installed a new roof deck and topped it with galvanized metal sheets that resembled the original. Original wood in the building was reused for the project, if possible. Interior walls also were shored up.

Barring any freak windstorms, the roof should enable the Painted Desert Trading Post to stand along Pima Road (aka old Route 66) for several more decades.

Mike Ward, one of the cooperative’s members, stated in a post on Facebook the third phase of the work in a few months will be to pour a new foundation for the building to stabilize it even more. He added:

That should be the final major step in preserving this great old building for many years to come. That doesn’t mean the work will stop there as there are many ideas being considered for the future of the Painted Desert Trading Post.

In the cooperative’s previous work a few months ago, they built a fence around the property to keep out grazing cattle, cleared debris from the inside of the building, removed brush and jacked up corners of the sagging structure to make it more level.

The co-op is auctioning a genuine Route 66 road sign on eBay to help defray costs of the project. The auction ends Thursday night.

The Route 66 Co-op received a $20,000 cost-share grant from the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program to stabilize the trading post’s walls, roof and foundation.

Dotch Windsor and his first wife, Alberta, opened the Painted Desert Trading Post along Route 66 during the early 1940s. Even along a busy Mother Road at that time, it was a remote outpost with no electricity or telephone service (gravity pumps dispensed the fuel).

It closed by the late 1950s after the highway bypassed it. The Painted Desert Trading Post, about a mile north of Interstate 40, remains inaccessible except for a locked gate. Those who wish to visit the trading post via Pinta Road can use these instructions to unlock the road’s main gate.

(Screen-capture image from “Roamin’ Rich” Dinkela drone footage of the new roof being installed at Painted Desert Trading Post in eastern Arizona)