Cool Springs Camp between Kingman and Oatman, Arizona, this year is marking the 20th anniversary of its improbable resurrection and reopening.
“Improbable” is warranted because the old Route 66 gas station was abandoned for years, then literally blown up in a scene in the 1991 Jean Claude Van Damme movie “Universal Soldier.”
Here’s the scene in question:
Cool Springs Camp found its savior in Chicago area resident Ned Leuchtner, who acquired the site and spent years reconstructing it into a gift shop and local museum.
Looking over his archives, he said reopened it to the public on May 2, 2004, which was during the Arizona Route 66 Fun Run.
Dennis DeChenne was the general contractor on the project. Here he is during the 2004 Fun Run.
Getting electricity brought back to the site — a four-year slog with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management — didn’t happen until December 2004. Leuchtner said rebuilding the site without power was the most challenging part of the project.
“What attracted me to this project was my initial curiosity as to ‘What happened to the old gas station that was here” when first visiting the site,” Leuchtner stated on Facebook Messenger.
“I also heard a voice while standing there looking across the desert at Thimble Butte. The voice that I heard said, ‘You’re supposed to do something here,'” he added.
“As a child, I loved going to old gas stations and talking with the older owners. It fascinated me to hear their stories. In the early 1970s, the old full-service gas stations disappeared. It felt nostalgia for that bygone era of Americana.”
Leuchtner said he plans to make additional renovations to Cool Springs Camp before Route 66’s centennial in 2026, including an additional structure west of the existing building and a lookout deck on the rear.
“Developing relationships with the family members who originally owned Cool Springs and their descendants has been particularly rewarding,” he added. “It has been like becoming part of their family history. The personal memories newly developed with younger Route 66 fans over the past 20 years are priceless.”
Cool Springs Camp opened on U.S. 66 in the 1920s but declined when another alignment of Route 66 was built to the east in the 1950s.
Leuchtner fell in love with the site during a Route 66 trip in 1997 and later acquired it.
(Image of Cool Springs Camp by James Marvin Phelps via Flickr; 2004 image of the camp courtesy of Ned Leuchtner)