The Meteor City Trading Post eventually will reopen for the first time since 2012 after its new owners have received a hand up from nearby Route 66 businesses and enthusiasts.
The Arizona Daily Sun in a feature story recounts the three-year saga of Joann and Michael Brown of Indiana, who bought the abandoned and vandalized property east of Flagstaff but moved to Arizona less than a year ago.
Joann lost her job in the Hoosier State and found a new position at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Prescott, Arizona. Michael is trying to sell their Indiana home so he can follow her to Arizona, and they recently received an offer for it.
The newspaper reported:
“I wish I could be out here day after day after day after day doing it,” she said. “The passion is so deep that I uprooted—I mean, to leave everything after 30-some-odd years, there’s a passion. The sacrifice that we have made to bring it back [cannot be understated].”
Michael regularly traveled the route as a child to visit family in Oklahoma, and he and Joann took the full trip together when they first moved to Indiana from their hometown in California. However, it wasn’t until just a few months ago that they found a photo negative from that trip, in which Joann had snapped a picture of the teepee structures and the sign reading “Exit 239” for Meteor City Road. To Joann, that was enough of a sign that she was meant to reopen the trading post.
The Browns also have receive help in Meteor City Trading Post’s ongoing restoration effort:
- Ed Klein, webmaster for Route 66 World, who advised Joann to keep the property’s justice-of-the-piece building because of its historic nature and uniqueness;
- Blas Sanchez and Angela Archibeque, owners of Earl’s Route 66 Motor Court in nearby Winslow, where Joann lived for a while when she moved to Arizona. The couple wound up helping Joann repeatedly at the Meteor City site;
- Cindy and Antonio Jaquez, owners of Jack Rabbit Trading Post near Joseph City, who offered encouragement and camaraderie.
Joann had planned to reopen June 9, but the coronavirus pandemic delayed everything, including permits. Part of the plan is to open Meteor City Trading Post as an arts market:
The art market is an important aspect for Joann, who has seen the high caliber of talent in Flagstaff, and hopes to provide an affordable platform for those looking to sell their work to a traveling customer base.
“I want to give back,” she said. “Everybody should have a chance, you know? It’s an opportunity.”
Among Joann’s other plans are to pay homage to the 1984 science fiction romance Starman, which includes a scene filmed in Meteor City’s geodesic dome. A section of the dome’s interior will be dedicated to movie merchandise. One of the teepee structures next to the building will potentially be turned into an ice cream shop, as it had operated in the past.
The “Starman” scene is here:
Meteor City’s 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 has gone through several expansions and reconstructions after fires.
Meteor City Trading Post is selling T-shirts through its Facebook page to raise revenue and buy more paint and supplies for the site’s restoration. Instructions are there on how to order a shirt and pay for it through PayPal.
(Image of Meteor City Trading Post in 2006 by Joe Wolf via Flickr)
I was never really able to wrap my head around Meteor City Trading Post. Sure, it’s got a quirky little building and it had a really cool Waldmire mural. But I just don’t get it. If it had something GIANT, that would really grab me.
Maybe they could put an illuminated red glowing fringe around it, where the hemisphere meets the ground. Then it might look like it’s a half-buried spherical meteorite. What about projected lighting that sort of pulses and meanders around in the orange/red end of the spectrum?
In any event, I look forward to stopping in for some ice cream, t-shirts, or whatever they decide to sell there.
Any chance Bob Waldmire’s map will be reestored?
There is an inaccuracy that a scene in Starman was filmed at Meteor City. It was actually filmed at the dome store right near the entrance to the Meteor Crater, which has a very similar apprarance. My parents had that store at the time and it the entire building was rented out for filming.