The Meteor City Trading Post west of Winslow, Arizona, has landed new owners from California, and the previous owner said the long-closed site would be preserved.
According to Coconino County property records, the property was sold in April for $50,000 to Dole Family Properties in Templeton, California. Dirk Dole is the agent for the company, according to state business records and now-previous Meteor City owner Joann Brown.
Dole also owns Crystal Cave in Springfield, Missouri; Mr. Putter’s Putt Putt in Atascadero, California, and other outdoor attractions.
“The baton has been passed,” said Brown, who had co-owned Meteor City Trading Post with her husband Micheal since 2017. Micheal died in 2022.
Brown said in a recent phone interview that Dole contacted her about acquiring the property.
“It’s all good. He wants to keep the history going,” she said. “I would not let it go so it would be demolished. I worked too hard to ever let that happen.
“The good news is it will stand and it will be what it’s supposed to be,” Brown added without elaboration.
Brown said Dole Family Properties began improving the property shortly after its acquisition. She also intimated the company may want Brown to be involved with Meteor City Trading Post, possibly as a manager or other role.
“He wants me to be the face of the trading post,” she said.
The Browns, who hailed from Indiana, purchased Meteor City Trading Post for $20,000 in 2017, according to county records.
Though Meteor City Trading Post never reopened during the Browns’ tenure, they made almost immediate improvements by cleaning it up. The trading post had been vandalized to within an inch of its life after it closed in 2012.
A phone message left with Dole Family Properties was not returned.
A scene was shot at the trading post for the 1984 Jeff Bridges sci-fi film “Starman.”
Late Route 66 artist Bob Waldmire also painted a mural on a fence there, calling it the “World’s Largest Map of Route 66.”
Meteor City’s distinctive geodesic dome has been there since 1979, but its days as a roadside business go back further.
A gas station operated on that site on U.S. 66 starting in 1938. The business itself went through several expansions or reconstructions.
UPDATE: Dole texted Route 66 News to say the process of reopening Meteor City will begin during the tourism off-season “when weather is nicer.”
(Image of Meteor City Trading Post in 2022 by Adam Cohn via Flickr)