The Havasu, a Harvey House on an old alignment of Route 66 in Seligman, Ariz., isn’t scheduled to be torn down until sometime today, but its obituary has already been written by the Prescott (Ariz.) Daily Courier.
When word leaked out about five years ago that the BNSF planned to demolish the hotel, Seligman residents mobilized to stop its demolition. When that failed, they tried to raise enough money to buy and move the building.
Railroad officials offered the hotel for free to anyone who would move it from their land.
“We’ve been working for almost a decade to donate the hotel but have been unsuccessful,” said BNSF spokeswoman Lena Kent. “From a safety perspective, it is in the best interest to take it down. So, it will be coming down within the next two weeks.”
One of the icons of Route 66, barbershop owner Angel Delgadillo, weighed in on the impending loss:
“It was just a beautiful hotel in a beautiful era,” he said. “For us boys, it was exciting to see the passenger trains pull in and watch the people get off and stretch their legs or go inside and eat.
“We would fantasize about all the parts of the world these people were traveling from. We would go down and mingle with them and pretend we were passengers traveling around the world with them.”
Angel’s daughter, Mirna, grew up in the shadow of the Havasu House.
“When they tear it down, we are going to lose a gem of history for Seligman and for our country’s heritage,” she said. “It is a very sad, sad day to lose it.”
The Havasu has been closed for more than 50 years. I strongly suspect that Seligman’s tiny size (fewer than 500 people live there) and poverty (median household income is barely half of the national average) were big factors in the Havasu’s demise. In short, the townsfolk and municipality didn’t have the money to move the massive, deteriorating building and perform the necessary rehabilitation.
Short of an unlikely intervention by the governor, the Havasu will likely exist only in memories within the next few days.
This is a travesty. What a shame…
That’s certainly a loss, but as the newspaper article describes, in a town that small, with limited resources, and a project that size, it seemed a forgone conclusion.
Its truly a damn shame, history lost is never regained.That station was link to colorful past, in still very colorful town.