ARROWS OF TIME

Posted on February 13, 2016 by Never Quite Lost

This image is what brought me to Route 66

The old Twin Arrows Trading Post, east of Flagstaff, is a place for which I hold a particular affection. It wasn’t the first Route 66 landmark that I visited, but it was the one that seemed the most familiar. I’d seen the pair of striking red and yellow 20-foot arrows in countless photos and on the front of Route 66 guides. They were a Mother Road icon.

The exterior was repainted a few years ago, but that just provided a blank canvas for rattle cans

And then, one day in 2006, I rolled up at Twin Arrows. I was prepared for the fact that the trading post and café would be derelict, but not the arrows. Not those wonderful, iconic symbols of Route 66. But there they were, barely more than two telegraph poles slanted into the ground, feathers missing, unloved and abandoned. For me, it was as if someone had put in all the windows of Buckingham Palace and no-one had noticed. Or cared.

Three years later, the arrows were restored to their former glory by volunteers and a group from the Hopi tribe and brought back a glimpse of the forty or so years in which this was a popular stop for travellers through Arizona. The trading post started life in around 1950 as the Canyon Padre Trading Post, established by FR ‘Ted’ and Jewel Griffiths. However, while working outside the post, Ted was hit by a passing

WH ‘Trox’ and Jean Troxell [Photo copyright of the Troxell Family]

motorist and his injuries meant he had to sell the business. On 15^th April 1955, ownership passed to William Harland ‘Trox’ Troxell and his wife Margaret Jean (who was known by her middle name).

Trox and Jean were already established in the area, running a photographic studio in Flagstaff. While serving in the Navy in the South Seas, Trox was appointed ship’s photographer on the Rocky Mount. He decided to capitalise on his skills in this area and, on 8^th March 1947, he and Jean opened their shop in downtown Flagstaff. When they purchased the trading post, responsibility for running the remote business fell on the shoulders of Jean and her parents, Edna and Levi ‘Max’ Maxwell. The Maxwells lived at the post while Jean commuted each day. For almost thirty years, she drove the 22 miles along the two-lane Route 66 from Flagstaff to Twin Arrows, seven days a week.

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The infamous anatomically correct statues – alas, no photo seems to exist to prove this!

The Troxells changed the name to Twin Arrows, a rejoinder at the nearby Two Guns, and installed the famous arrows, along with two giant statues in loin clothes (apparently, anatomically correct underneath, as many travellers checked!) and a coin-operated telescope which offered views of the San Francisco Peaks. The store stocked a vast range of souvenirs and Indian goods, while gas was pumped outside. There was already a Valentine’s diner – one of the readymade buildings that was delivered, ready to roll, complete with furnishings – on the site, but the Troxells decided to lease this out.

The Twin Arrows Trading Post in 1955 when the Troxells bought it

The store was run as a family business, with all three children working at the shop and gas station, something which, daughter April says, gave them all the chance to save for their college education. The whole family knew about hard work; as well as running and expanding the original photographic business, Trox managed to record a three-minute radio programme every day for 30 years, expounding on political commerce, travel, economic matters and what he called just ‘plain horsesense’. He was also a Scout leader for a quarter of a century, a respected member of the local business community and photographed the local area and events, including the building of the Glen Canyon Dam, while both he and Jean were deeply involved in the Happy Farm Orphanage in Sonoita, Mexico.

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The well-stocked interior of the Twin Arrows Trading Post

Being in a remote spot, Twin Arrows saw its share of drama, and not all of it involved traffic accidents, although there were a number of accidents on the old two-lane road, some fatal. In 1952, 54-year-old Virginia McNabb was killed outside the post when she rolled her ’59 green Plymouth. In 1960, 19-year-old Robert Stone was jailed for a year and a day in the state prison in Florence for robbing the coin-operated telescope of $68 (either that was one expensive telescope or it wasn’t emptied very often!) If that seems a harsh sentence, then it may be because young Stone had something of a record. In the few months since he’d moved from North Carolina to Winslow he had been arrested for burglary, liquor offences and was a passenger in a car in which Carol Wickham, the teenage daughter of a Winslow councilman, had been killed.

Toonerville, where Slick McAlister was shot to death. It’s still a cold case.

In 1959, Ary J Best, a 66-year-old tourist who had made his last stop at Twin Arrows, was stabbed to death and his body dumped east of the trading post; a couple was later arrested in Pasadena after abandoning the victim’s car and charged with his murder (Patrick MacGee went to the gas chamber for the crime in 1963, his girlfriend, Millie Fain, was sentenced to 14-20 years in prison). But crime came far closer to home on 30^th August 1971. Shortly after a car had stopped for gas at Twin Arrows, the trading post received a panicked phone call from Mrs Pearl McAlister at the Toonerville post a mile away. Those motorists had also stopped there, and while she was cooking them hamburgers, they had shot her and her husband and ransacked the place. Merrett ‘Slick’ McAlister died at the scene. The murder has never been solved.

This may be the reason why, for the next few years, the Twin Arrows diner found it difficult to get staff, advertising regularly in the local paper, raising the hourly wage offered from $1.25 to $1.60 over the months.

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The diner and the trading post in the 1970s

After Max retired and their son Jim went into the Navy, the Troxells hired a couple to manage the trading post but when they finally retired, Trox and Jean found it difficult to find good help. The trading post stood on state-owned land and, despite countless attempts by the Troxells, the state of Arizona refused to sell them the 10 acres. In 1971, Interstate 40 opened on this section, although Twin Arrows fared better than other places. The initial scheme would have seen it bypassed by an overpass, but, thanks to a Troxell family member who was a civil engineer and submitted an alternative – and cheaper – design which was accepted, Twin Arrows was given its own exit. However, trade still dropped off.

Still distinctly a Valentine diner, the 65-year-old manufactured building has held up surprising well against the weather and vandalism, but is probably beyond saving

In 1995, Spencer and Virginia Riedel took over the trading post and attempted to revive it. Virginia had wanted to restore the Valentines diner in 1950s style but it was economically unviable to bring it up to county code. The Twin Arrows Trading Post closed for the last time in 1998. It was finally the end for the famous Route 66 stop. The trading post is now owned by the Hopi and, despite plans to restore it, it continues to fall into decay and ruin. The arrows still stand, but even they, like the glory of the Twin Arrows Trading Post, are now fading away.

The interior of the Valentine diner

The rear of the trading post where there was living accommodation

The decaying interior of the trading post

The pumps in the background would, I assume, have been for trucks rather than cars

The CAFE sign is untouched by graffiti, possibly because they couldn’t reach…

UPDATE: Sadly after writing this article, the grafitti idiots finally got to the CAFE sign as well as painting over part of the TWIN ARROWS TRADING POST signage. In the last two years, the place has become increasingly vandalized and much of the interior cladding has been ripped away. Unfortunately, I predict that one day I will pass by here and it will have been burned to the ground.

METEOR CITY – POPULATION TWO

Posted on January 7, 2016 by Never Quite Lost

On the long stretch of I-40 that crosses Arizona, a clay-coloured dome breaks up the monotony of the landscape. To the south of the interstate, on what was old Route 66, sits the remains of the Meteor City Trading Post.

The Newsums outside the original trading post when it still has gas pumps. Probably early 1950s

Six miles from the Barringer or Meteor Crater, the post took its name from the landmark when it was originally built by Joseph Sharber in 1938. Like the other five trading posts between Winona and Winslow (Twin Arrows, Toonerville, Two Guns, Rimmy Jim’s and Hopi House), Meteor City sold the usual mix of Indian souvenirs and also, for the first few years of its life, had a gas station. But Meteor City outlived all its rivals and was also the only one to ever re-open. The fact that Meteor City exists at all is down to one couple, Jack and Goldie Newsum.

Jack and Goldie Newsum – the happy newly-weds…

Jack Newsum was born in Iowa in 1900. For several years he worked for the Hammond police department in Indiana before, like so many, lighting out for California, in his case Santa Monica. For whatever reason, he then moved east again, this time as far as Winslow, Arizona, and, in 1941, he bought the Meteor City Trading Post. He said that he had always wanted to live in a city and, in July 1942, the state highway department obliged him by erecting a Meteor City sign.

For the next few years he ran the post alone and then, rather to everyone’s surprise, he went off to Alabama and returned in January 1946 with a new bride, 41-year-old Goldie. Sadly, several revered works on Route 66 consistently misname her as Gloria. However, she was born Goldie Pearl Moman and was never, to my knowledge, known as Gloria. Even when she later became a Justice of the Peace, council records always list her as Goldie Newsum.

Goldie and Hattie removed the population number because you just never can tell…

Perhaps the biggest mystery is how Jack and Goldie came to be married. Although her family lived in Florida when she was young, Goldie was born in Alabama – a state to which Jack had no known links – and returned there in her 20s, working as a stenographer for a local textile factory and boarding with the Sport family in Baker Street, Covington. It was a short-lived independence and by the time of the 1940 census the 36-year-old spinster was back living with her parents, the Reverend Arthur Clarence and Hattie Moman, in Covington.

However they may have met and wed, Jack took the opportunity to gain some publicity for the trading post by having the local newspaper photograph the newly-weds by the city limits sign, now with the addition of ‘POPULATION 2’. At the time, Jack told the reporter; “We have left room on the sign for further changes. Maybe we’ll even get a bigger sign.” With the couple both in their 40s, it was a hopeful statement and indeed they never had children. The population did increase to three in 1955 when they were joined by Goldie’s mother, Hattie, after the death of the Reverend Moman.

This is the interior of a building that acted as the Justice of the Peace office in the Newsums’ time

By now, Jack was in ill-health. He resigned his position as a Justice of the Peace and his wife took up the reins. Urban legend has Goldie known as ‘the wicked witch of Route 66’ for her apparent hard line on speeding offenders, but it’s just as likely bitterness on the part of those caught! Life couldn’t have been easy for Goldie; Jack died in December 1960 and shortly afterwards the trading post caught fire and was moved into another building. The oldest Moman child, Goldie had seen three younger brothers, Chester, Clarence and Porter Lee, die before she was 10 years old herself.

Goldie and Hattie continued to live at and run the trading post until Goldie’s death in 1967. Shortly before her death she said, “We had the population of Meteor City on the city limits sign but we rubbed it out. Can’t ever tell about people these days. Might try something funny if they knew there’s only two people living here, both women.” She was buried with Jack in the Desert View Cemetery in Winslow and Hattie moved to Dallas where her surviving child, Burny, lived and would spend the last four years of her life in Texas.

Bob Waldmire’s map, so much lumber on the ground

But it wasn’t quite the end for the Meteor City Trading Post. For most of its life it had been housed in a conventional building but, in 1979, that building was replaced with a geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller. It even had 15 seconds of fame when the dome was featured as a restaurant in the 1984 film, ‘Starman’. It may well have been during this period that the noted Route 66 artist Bob Waldmire created the ‘world’s Longest Route 66 Map’ – curiously, no-one seems to know just when it appeared.

This is how the World’s Longest Map of Route 66 looked in 2010

Then, in 1990, the dome burned down. It was rebuilt – the structure that still stands – and changed ownership. In July 2001, Meteor City closed. But that still wasn’t the end. Richard and Ermila Benton bought the place and reopened it. With the help of volunteers from the Hampton Inn hotel chain, the map and six tepees were restored, albeit with more enthusiasm than accuracy. For another ten years, the Trading Post staggered on, people stopping to look at moccasins and the ‘World’s Biggest Dreamcatcher’. But, for the most part, the traffic just kept moving.

Everything inside the trading post has been trashed

In 2012, Meteor City was offered for sale for $150,000. There were no takers and, in December of that year, the doors closed for good. Now, two years on, those doors stand wide open and the interior of the trading post has been destroyed by vandals. Every display cabinet

Nothing remains except broken glass and debris

has been smashed, the remains of the map smashed and graffiti sprayed over the ersatz Indian murals. The dreamcatcher, intact and proud when I first visited Meteor City when it was still open, is tattered and probably won’t last another winter. I understand the owners will now take $50,000 for the buildings and its surrounding four acres. Even so, who would be prepared to follow in the footsteps of Jack and Goldie?

This massive lump of petrified wood has proved too heavy for vandals or thieves. In the background, the tattered dreamcatcher

A COUNTERFEIT STORY

Posted on December 16, 2015 by Never Quite Lost

The former Conoco station between Arcadia and Luther, Oklahoma.

Just between Arcadia and Luther, Oklahoma, on Route 66, is a small stone ruin on the side of the road. There’s a homemade sign which says ‘HISTORICAL BUILDING “RT 66”’ but no further explanation.

The front of the Conoco station where the pumps would have once stood.

This was once a Conoco gas station, one of the earliest in this part of the country, and one of the few of which anything remains. Despite its age – it was probably built around the early 1920s and certainly pre-dates Route 66 – there would be little to mark it from any other stone ruin were it not for the fact this little place has a story. But is it story or myth?

This place doesn’t even appear to have had a name – I’ve seen it referred to as the Old Rock station, but that might simply be a handy description rather than an actual title. However, as it stands on the edge of land belonging to the Rock of Ages Farm, it seems as useful a shorthand as any. The gas station had two fuel pumps, one for regular gas and one for ethyl, as well as dispensing drums for oil and kerosene. The latter was necessary because electricity was a long way from making it out to this remote spot and most homes and buildings used kerosene lamps. So far it was no different from the dozens of little gas stations that sprang up to service the growing wave of motorists.

The fireplace at the rear of the store which would have been the only source of heat.

But, so the story will have it, despite bearing the Conoco name, the place fell upon hard times, and sometime in the 1930s, a passing salesman offered to sell the owners printing plates for making counterfeit $10 bills. It was, apparently, too good an opportunity to miss. A small room was built on the back of the already tiny building, the entrance to this hideaway through a rear window which was kept boarded up. The bills were printed one side at a time but clearly they weren’t quite the key to fortune the station’s owners had hoped; when one of them was arrested while trying to pass one of the phony bills, the police searched the fuel station and found the printing plates. The gas station closed and never re-opened.

It’s a great story. The trouble is there is no evidence that it ever happened.

Back in the 1930s, the newspaper was king and Oklahoma possessed several lively papers that covered every scrap of news available. Yet there is no mention of any counterfeiting ring at the Old Rock or, for that matter, anyone from Luther being arrested for just about anything. Counterfeiting was a popular crime during the 1930s and the newspapers of the time covered many such police investigations and trials in huge detail, but not one mentioned anywhere or anything that could be conceivably linked to the Conoco station.

Lyle Dean Melton (left) and Red Abbott. Probably not hardened counterfeiters…

There is no trace of the hidden room at the ruin or even any indication of how it might have been constructed, while the only known photograph of the operating gas station is not only clearly marked ‘1940’ – after the supposedly crime and closure – it also names the two men in the photo as ‘Red Abbott’ and ‘Lyle Melton’ and it’s a reasonable supposition that they either owned or worked there. Red Abbott seems lost to time, but Lyle, 29 years old when the photograph was taken, was from a large family which had settled in Luther. There’s no evidence that he was ever in trouble (least of all for counterfeiting) and, although he and his wife Mary later moved away, they are both buried in Luther Cemetery, along with his parents and four of his ten siblings. None of the family were born in the little town; they were from Christian, Missouri, but clearly they were sufficiently attached to Luther to make it their place of eternal rest, which might not necessarily have been the case if one member of the family had been a notorious local criminal.

The window in the rear wall was, apparently, the entrance to the hidden room where $10 bills were printed.

It’s not the only dubious but unsubstantiated claim to criminal fame given to Luther. Several notable books on Route 66 state that it was near the gas station that, a few days after Christmas 1950, serial killer Billy Cook abducted and killed the Mosser family from Illinois. However, the unfortunate Mossers didn’t get as far as Luther; when they stopped for a hitchhiker it was between Claremore and Tulsa, some way further east. But sometimes the story is just better than the truth…

THE ELIZALDE CEMENT WORKS

Posted on December 15, 2015 by Never Quite Lost

ooooo

Just south of Beatty, Nevada, is the Elizalde Cement Factory which was built by the Carrara Portland Cement Company at the beginning of the 1940s.

Although officially known as the Carrara Portland Cement Company Plant, it was usually referred to as the Elizalde works after Angel M Elizalde, a major investor in the plant and director of the company. At the time, it was intended to be one of the most advanced plants of its kind in the USA with houses for the workers. It would produce commercial grey cement and also a fancy high quality cement made from the crushed marble and clay from the nearby Carrara quarry.

ooooooo However, the factory never went into operation. The popular notion is that it provided to be too costly and logistically difficult to move the cement. Whether that’s true or not, just a month before production was due to start in July 1941, a fire completely destroyed the machine shop, storehouse, blacksmith shop and an office. A few weeks later, the Carrara Portland Cement Company at Carrara closed down, apparently unable to find parts to replace those lost in the fire.

ooo The company, however, announced its intention to continue, and then Pearl Harbor happened. The advent of fuel rationing in the following spring made it impossible for the company to run its machinery and transport its goods, even if it had been able to get the plant back up and running, which, without sufficient diesel was impossible. It was abandoned, although some of the machinery remained for several years. Today, the only visitors are those wielding aerosol cans or those who’ve glanced up from Highway 95 and been curious enough to drive the deteriorating track.

THE TRADING ATKINSONS OF ROUTE 66

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Never Quite Lost

THE REMAINS OF THE RATTLE SNAKE TRADING POST, BLUEWATER, NM, 2015

In a time when almost every town along Route 66 had a trading post, one small place spawned two families who would not only establish networks of stores but who would, in the 21^st century, still be in business.

In the 1940s, Bluewater in New Mexico was home to trading posts owned by Claude Bowlin, the man behind what would become Bowlin’s Travel Centers of which there are 10 across New Mexico and Arizona, but also to the Atkinson family. The Atkinsons were from Texas and during the Great Depression, Leroy Atkinson, the oldest brother of three, headed to New Mexico with his wife and just $18 dollars in his pocket. Leroy was a high school football star when he met Wilmerine Bollin and they had been married in 1935; he was 19 and his wife 17. Leroy found work at the Three Hogans Trading Post in west of Lupton and was later joined by his two young brothers, Herman and Jake.

LEROY ATKINSON’S BOX CANYON TRADING POST WHICH WAS DEMOLISHED IN A REALIGNMENT OF ROUTE 66 IN 1953

In 1943, Leroy started the Box Canyon Trading Post on the Arizona/New Mexico state line on land leased from Harry Miller, the man who had developed Two Guns. (This was shortly after Miller had been being tried for murder – but that’s another story). The Box Canyon Trading Post prospered; it had a gas station, auto court, store and café. Oh, and live buffalo. However the growth in traffic that ensured its short-term success was also its downfall. The increasing traffic on Route 66 resulted in the road being realigned and running straight through the trading post. In 1953 the Box Canyon Trading Post was demolished and Leroy and Wilmerine moved to Albuquerque.

JAKE ATKINSON’S RATTLE SNAKE TRADING POST, BLUEWATER, NM, IN ITS PRIME

In the meantime, the other two brothers had also moved into the retail trade. In 1945, middle brother Jake and his wife Maxine bought the Brock Trading Post from Victor Holmes after briefly running the Stateline Trading Post a mile west of Leroy’s emporium. In order to attract passing trade, they tied burros to the gas pumps, staged cockfights and, most spectacularly, renamed it the Rattlesnake Trading Post. It did indeed have rattlesnakes as well as a café and a night club. Billboards along the highway also advertised that you could see the skeleton of a 48-foot long prehistoric reptile. Anyone who looked closely at that marvel might have wondered why it was made out of a cow skull, cow vertebrae and a good quantity of plaster.

JAKE ATKINSON'S RATTLE SNAKE TRADING POST AT BLUEWATER, NEW MEXICO. C.1952

In 1951, Jake and Maxine sold the trading post to her sister and brother-in-law who kept the name, if not the reptile gardens. But it had clearly given Herman, the youngest brother, an idea. Arriving home from the services, he decided to start his own reptile-inspired ranch. On 1^st May 1946, 26-year-old Herman and his 24-year-old wife, Phyllis, opened the Lost Canyon Trading Post a mile and a half east of Grants near what is now Airport Road. To attract trade, they bought two baby boa constrictors which they advertised as the ‘Den of Death’. When the pair of snakes brought in more customers than the souvenirs, he decided to build a large reptile house and charge admission. By the early 1950s, Atkinson’s Cobra Gardens had around 300-400 snakes, including rattlesnakes, anacondas, pythons and cobras. It was the collection of cobras in the USA and attracted thousands of visitors from both home and abroad.

HERMAN ATKINSON’S COBRA GARDENS NEAR GRANTS. c 1952

However the heyday of the Cobra Gardens lasted less than ten years. Although it made Herman a very successful man, he sold the trading post in 1953, quietly selling his collection of snakes through the classified ads of Billboard in an ad that began GOING OUT OF BUSINESS. He listed a ’13 foot, heavy’ African python for $300, down to ‘assorted small rattlesnakes, $1’ from his home at 51 East Congress Street in Tucson.

HERMAN ATKINSON, THE COBRA KING. 1953

Herman had seen which way the wind was blowing. The area was moving towards mining and not tourism and there was talk that an interstate highway was planned that would bypass Route 66. He sold the Cobra Gardens and it became the somewhat less threatening Cactus Garden Trading Post. Herman and Phyllis moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, where he established Atkinson’s Trading Post, which he ran until his death in 2009 at the age of 89. His wife, Phyllis, passed away three years later but their daughter Marilyn continues to operate the store. After he sold the Cobra Gardens, Herman never had anything else to do with reptiles.

Leroy opened the Indian Village company in Tucson with Jake, with Jake eventually taking it over. The company is still in the Atkinson family, now run by Jake’s son, John. Jake and Leroy both passed away in the late 1980s and little remains of the Atkinsons’ early roots. The Box Canyon Trading Post disappeared underneath Route 66; the Cobra Gardens was demolished in 2011 and the only building that remains is Jake’s store in Bluewater. Look closely and you can see, across the front of a crumbling building, faded paint that reads RATTLESNAKES. Listen hard and you might just hear on the wind the excited chatter of travellers, pulling off 66 to stroke a burro and see a real live rattlesnake…

THE 11TH STREET BRIDGE

Posted on November 27, 2015 by Never Quite Lost

Tulsa old and new: looking from the middle of the 11th Street Bridge towards the city centre

While I may be never quite lost, sometimes I find myself in places where I possibly shouldn’t be. But rarely in plain sight in the middle of a city.

Tulsa, Oklahoma, was built on oil, but it was also the hometown of Cyrus Avery, ‘the Father of Route 66’, and he would probably never have been welcomed home again if he hadn’t ensured that new highway ran through Tulsa. However, there are a couple of equally likely and valid reasons; Tulsa had a bridge.

NE towards 11th St Bridge in 1917, shortly after it opened

The bridge in 1917, shortly after opening

Moreover, it was the first purpose-built automobile bridge to span the 1450 miles of the Arkansas River which runs through the city. Built in 1916, it was something of a wonder for the flatlands. One of the longest concrete structures in the Midwest, it was also the first major multi-span (eighteen of them) concrete bridge in Oklahoma. By providing an easy crossing of the Arkansas, it allowed the oil industry in Tulsa to flourish.

And the second reason? Remember that Cyrus Avery came from Tulsa; serving as Oklahoma County Commissioner from 1913 to 1916, he was involved with the construction of the bridge and it must have had a place in his heart. Even today, it’s still a structure of which to be proud.

It was built by the Missouri Valley Bridge and Iron Company for $180,000, and, at 1470 feet long and 34 feet wide, supported a railroad track in the middle and a single lane of vehicular traffic either side, flanked by pavements. In 1934, it was widened to 52 feet and 8 inches and could accommodate four lanes of traffic. Careful traffic, that is. 52 feet is not all that wide…

There was a gate open – honest!

And, for the next 63 years, the 11^th Street Bridge served Tulsa well, bringing prosperity into the city, and allowing travellers to make their way across Oklahoma to the promised lands via Route 66. But it started to show its age. Lanes were closed, load limits implemented and then, in 1975, the City had to pay compensation to a woman who fell through a hole in one of the walkways. It was only $1100, but it was a wake-up call that the bridge was in trouble. A new crossing was commissioned and, in 1980, the 11^th Street Bridge was closed to traffic. There was talk of tearing it down, but, luckily, the money to demolish it never seemed to quite transpire.

Even the weeds have to fend for themselves

Too dangerous for city employees to step onto the bridge to spray them, the weeds are taking over

In 2004, the bridge was renamed the Cyrus Avery Route 66 Memorial Bridge, but a new fancy name didn’t make it any more structurally sound. Then, in 2008, it was closed to even pedestrians, a plan to make it safe enough to reopen to walking traffic having been costed at $15 million. Rather than spend that sort of money, the city gave the bridge a bit of a spruce up and then gated it off. This was after surveyors decided that the bridge was too unsafe to even walk on. I suspect they probably don’t even want you to look at it that hard. The blacktop on the bridge is actually just a waterproof coating and the bridge is too weak to hold up another layer of asphalt. The city sprays the weeds occasionally, but even that is considered risky.

The 'Cyrus Avery Memorial Bridge' from the Cyrus Avery Memorial Plaza. Those Tulsans are proud of their native son.

Looking down the Cyrus Avery Memorial Bridge from the Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza. Tulsa is proud of its native son

Now, I have to say I didn’t know all this when I found myself at the 11^th Street Bridge one grey October morning. I don’t know why a side gate was open, but even if I had realised that there was a distinct possibility a hole might open up underneath me and plunge me into the muddy waters of the Arkansas River, then I would probably still have walked its length. Only afterwards did I realise how lucky I was to have had that chance.

THE MAN WHO WROTE ROUTE 66

Posted on November 23, 2015 by Never Quite Lost

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There is one man – other than, of course, Cyrus Avery – to whom Route 66 aficionados owe a debt of gratitude. Yet most people know very little about Jack DeVere Rittenhouse, other than the fact that he wrote one of the seminal works on the Mother Road.

In 1946, Rittenhouse published A Guide Book to Highway 66, not only the first book on Route 66, then only two decades old, but the first to chronicle any major highway in the USA. When that book was reprinted in 1988, Rittenhouse wrote the foreword, which is how we know that he undertook the trip in a 1939 American Bantam. For the time, it was tiny – even to modern eyes it looks like the sort of car Noddy or Minnie Mouse might have driven and, in fact, a 1938 American Bantam was the inspiration for Donald Duck’s car. Rittenhouse doesn’t even tell us which model he drove, although it seems likely, as he refers to the lack of trunk, that it was a four-seater Model 60.

Jack Rittenhouse was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1912 and developed a love of books in childhood. When he was little more than a toddler, his family moved to Arizona, although he returned east as a young man and attended Indiana State Teachers College for three years until the Depression forced him to leave and get a job. Unfortunately his first job, writing book reviews at the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette didn’t pay, and the young Jack made a few dollars by selling his review copies to libraries. Little is known of his early personal life, although he married Beulah Rose Scherrer on 17th May 1935 in Elkhart, Indiana when she was just 19 years old. There couldn’t have been much of a honeymoon for the very next month, Rittenhouse was riding freight trains to New York City to search for work in publishing.

He was employed by Park Row Books & Magazines in lower Manhattan where he sold used books for six months. But, by 1936, he was off riding freight trains across the country. What Beulah thought of this is not on record, nor what she did while he was off seeing the country, although he was clearly home on occasion because the marriage produced a son, David Kinsey, who was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in May 1938.

Returning to New York City, he found work with Alfred A Knopf before moving into advertising because it paid better (he did, however, continue to write a column for the Journal-Gazette, still selling off the books when he’d finished with them). When the Second World War came, he was exempt from joining up and was instead employed writing training manuals for the US Air Force. By now, his marriage to Beulah had ended in divorce and he was living in Chicago, where he met his second wife, Charlotte Jewell High, ten years his junior. They were married in 1944 in Missouri. His job in advertising took them to Los Angeles and along the way Rittenhouse realised that, with the war over, people would want to travel for pleasure and the freedom of the highway, particularly those servicemen and women from the Mid West and the East Coast who had been stationed in California, and they would use Route 66.

So, taking to the road again, this time in his little automobile rather than hopping trains, he began on his travel guide. One presumes Charlotte was a tolerant lady. He researched, wrote, designed and self-published A Guide Book to Highway 66, even drawing the maps and little illustrations, working out mileages and documenting the gas stations, tourist cabins and motels in each place along the road. He printed 3000 copies and sold them for a dollar apiece. In the rather poignant last line of the book, Rittenhouse wrote ‘If you have any suggestions on improving this Guide Book, address them to the publisher, so they can be included in future editions.’ Poignant because there were no future editions and it’s true to say that A Guide Book to Highway 66 was not a runaway success. In fact, the ‘second edition’ wouldn’t come until 1988 and that, of course, would be an accurate facsimile of the original book rather than contain any updates.

For the next few years, Rittenhouse hopped between selling rare books and working in advertising, as well as running his own one-man publisher, the Stagecoach Press. In 1952 he began his own agency, selling it to the Marsteller Company in 1959. The following year, he devoted his time to the Stagecoach Press, producing a number of titles. The publishing house went into hibernation when, after two years at the Museum of New Mexico Press, he joined the staff of the University of New Mexico Press where he worked until he retired in 1978 and promptly started up the Stagecoach once more. However, when the guide was reprinted in 1988, it was with his old employers rather than the Stagecoach Press.

Having fallen in love with New Mexico, he and Charlotte settled in Albuquerque, while Rittenhouse took great pleasure in documenting ghost towns, Indian ruins, mining camps and anywhere that ever had a post office, and many of his photographs are in the Rittenhouse Collection at the New Mexico State University Library.

Charlotte lived to the age of 90,surviving longer than her husband and all three of their children, each of whom died relatively young. Douglas died in 2001 in Texas aged 54; Susan passed the following year at the age of 49, also in Texas, while her sister Anne was just short of 55 when she died in California, having moved there with her husband, Harry Briley, in 1976.

Jack D Rittenhouse died in 1991, having lived long enough to see his little guide become a late success among a whole new generation for whom the Mother Road means nostalgia rather than freedom. Now it’s referred to and quoted by just about anyone who ever writes a word about Route 66, as well as becoming a glovebook essential, just as he intended more than half a century ago.

JACK AND CHARLOTTE RITTENHOUSE WITH THEIR DAUGHTER ANNE AT HER GRADUATION

SANTA CLAUS IS COMIN’ TO TOWN

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Never Quite Lost

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THE OLD GAS STATION

Santa Claus is north-west of Kingman on US 93 and began life in 1937 when Los Angeles realtor Nina Talbot bought 80 acres in Arizona and began a motel (originally called the Kit Carson Guest House). For reasons best known to Mrs Talbot, she decided to give the place a Santa Claus theme, probably with the intention of attracting buyers for the surrounding lots. She did claim to be the biggest real estate agent in the area, although that may have had more to do with the fact that she weighed over 22 stone than her business acumen.

IN THE 1940S, THIS GIANT BILLBOARD ENTICED VISITORS AS THEY PASSED OVER THE HOOVER DAM

While building Santa Claus’s village in the middle of the Arizona desert seems an odd idea, it turned out to be surprisingly successful in attracting tourists, but not in selling the parcels of lands. Although it was designated a town, the only people who actually lived there were those who worked at the inn or in the US Post Office or the land sales office. Mrs Talbot sold the place in 1949 by which time it was a genuine tourist attraction.

The land sales office was converted into a Texaco station and Kit Carson’s Guest House was renamed as the Santa Claus Inn and, in the 1950s, the Christmas Tree Inn. It had Santa’s Workshop, the House of the Three Pigs and Cinderella’s Dolls House and the ‘Old 1225’ train.

CINDERELLA’S DOLLS HOUSE IS LONG GONE

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THE DERELICT RESTAURANT

Curiously, for a roadside attraction, it had a very good air-conditioned restaurant which noted food critic Duncan Hines called one of the best in the region. (Mind you, if you know the Kingman area, you’ll know there’s not all that much competition).

Robert Heinlein wrote about it in ‘Cliff and the Calories’, a short story published in 1950, listing the menu’s dishes, while Hollywood legend Jane Russell would host a dinner for ten friends at the restaurant four years later.

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WISHING WELL

Santa Claus’s busiest time was, fittingly, December of each year when, for 25 cents and a stamp, employees would write to children, the envelope postmarked Santa Claus. Thousands of letters were sent out to hopeful kids.

But, by the 1970s, Santa Claus was in terminal decline. Although, back in the 1950s, there had been plans to capitalise on the Christmas theme by setting out streets with festive names (like Prancer Parkway), people only stopped in Santa Claus long enough to eat a meal or fill their tanks. It was up for sale for $95,000 in 1983, the then owner turning down an offer of $50,000 because he felt it was worth more. He relisted it in 1988 for $52,500. It’s still for sale. It was removed from the Arizona state map, the last remaining businesses closed in 1995, and the surviving residents moved out, too.

THE HOUSE OF THE THIRD LITTLE PIG AT ITS PRIME

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THE HOUSE OF THE THIRD LITTLE PIG TODAY

SANTA CLAUS GAS STATION IN 1940 WITH CINDERELLA’S DOLLS HOUSE IN THE BACKGROUND

Sadly, its roadside location in the middle of nowhere, the very thing that made it a success for weary travellers on the way to Las Vegas, has been its downfall as vandals moved in. And children’s letters to Father Christmas? They now go to Santa Claus, Indiana.

UPDATE: And then, ironically just before Christmas 2021, it was gone. Now all that remains is a patch of waste land and an old billboard.

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A GRAVE IN THE DESERT

Posted on November 16, 2015 by Never Quite Lost

Just short of the ruins of Palmetto, Nevada, is the grave of Clyde Marshall Hart, born on May 7th 1903 and who died of diphtheria on December 3rd 1906. Apparently his 2-year-old brother Kenneth also passed just five weeks later. That is according to the official records, although the Blair News, a local newspaper of the time, reported that the boys died just a week apart.

Clyde was two years old himself when his parents, Victor and Lydia, moved to Palmetto from Santa Rosa, California, no doubt hopeful of making that big strike and never dreaming they would lose both their sons so tragically. The marker only mentions Clyde, and people have often assumed that Kenneth was buried with him. However the little boy lies alone, his younger brother having died and been buried in Silver Peak, another town to the north west. The Blair News reported that Mrs Hart had ‘been quite ill for several days prior to starting for California, her illness being aggravated by the mental anguish of the loss of the children in so short a time.’

After burying their children, the Harts continued back to California; Lydia gave birth to a son, Alan, almost exactly a year to the day after Clyde’s death, and a daughter, Evelyn, in 1910. Both Lydia and Victor lived into old age, Victor dying in 1958 at the age of 80 and Lydia living until she was 97 and they are buried beside each other in the Oddfellows Cemetery in Sacramento. Having lost two children so young, it must have been a consolation that their son and daughter lived long and full lives. Alan died in 1994 and Evelyn just nine years ago aged 96. Did the family ever come back to Palmetto to visit the grave or was it too painful a part of their life?

At some point in the past, someone decided that the little boy’s grave should not just disappear into the landscape. It’s highly unlikely that his parents erected the railings and definitely not the original headstone which mistakenly gives Clyde the initial ‘W’, as well as inscribing the wrong year of death.

I thought at first how odd it was that there are no other graves in the area, but because Palmetto existed for such a short time – the silver that was struck lasted barely a year – it could be that the little Hart boys were the only people to die out in this lonely place. But the toys and paraphernalia on the grave (I left a toy car) show that they are not forgotten.

SOUTH OF DEVILS GATE

Posted on November 13, 2015 by Never Quite Lost

Silver City, Nevada, was established in 1850 and had an exciting first few years. In the Paiute War of May 1860, the townspeople constructed a wooden cannon for protection, while one of the first stamp mills in Nevada was built later that year. No, before you ask, I have no clue how a wooden cannon is constructed but I suspect that, for the good of not only the Paiute but the folks operating it, it was never used.

By 1861, it had a population of around 1200, with accompanying saloons, hotels and boarding houses, as well as stabling for those travelling between the Comstock Lode mines of Virginia City and processing mills. Devils Gate, however, was a frequent haunt of highwaymen. Devils Gate, to the north of Silver City, was a toll road (now the US-342) which shortened the journey to Gold Hill and Virginia City and cut out the winding Occidental Grade of what is now US-341. Unfortunately, the 342 was closed for roadwork while I was there, meaning I had to take the long twisty route to Gold Hill. Twice, actually, because I got lost. It’s not the sort of road you really want to do twice if you don’t have to…

Silver City managed to thrive until the completion of the Virginia & Truckee Railroad in 1869 after which the population quickly moved away. Now about 100 or so people live there, most of whom probably knew I was there. It is a little bit The Hills Have Eyes. Apparently, the cemetery is worth a visit, but it appeared to be on the other side of the road closure.

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NEVER QUITE LOST

The road goes on forever

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