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THE GLENRIO PONTIAC

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Larry Travis’s Pontiac Catalina.

Of the many cars along Route 66, probably one of the most photographed and instantly recognizable is the white Pontiac in Glenrio, Texas. Everyone who visits the town takes a photo of it and, while they might congratulate themselves on identifying it as a 1968 Pontiac Catalina, very few will even give a second thought to how it ended up on the forecourt of a derelict gas station.  But there is a reason why the Pontiac is there.

The Texaco station forecourt on which it sits was built by Joseph (Joe) Brownlee in 1950, while the diner to the side (often and erroneously known as the Little Juarez Diner – it was never called that)  was originally called the Brownlee Diner and opened in 1952. Behind the gas station is the Joseph Brownlee house which was first built in 1930 in Amarillo and was then moved to Glenrio when Joe bought land there. It now houses Mrs Ruth Roxann Travis, Joe’s daughter and the one remaining resident of Glenrio; the dogs whose barking welcomes you to Glenrio belong to Roxann.

Roxann grew up in Glenrio, helping her father, along with her six brothers and sisters, at his two gas stations at a time when Route 66 was often nose-to-tail traffic. It all came to a grinding halt when Interstate 40 opened in 1973. Three years before, when she was just 19 and he three years older, Roxann had married Larry Lee Travis, a quiet young man from Darrouzzett. By 1975, however, everything was just about closed in Glenrio and Roxann and Larry now had a family, a little son called Michael Joe. So Larry approached a former employer, Don Morgan, and asked if he could rent the Standard Service Station on the east side of Adrian. Mr Morgan had closed the gas station a few months before and didn’t expect it to reopen. But he knew Larry was a hard worker and, after some persuasion, he agreed to rent the garage to him.

So, each day, Larry got in his white 1968 Pontiac Catalina and drove the 25 miles to Adrian to run the gas station. It wasn’t a job without risks – just the previous year a group of gas, shop and service station owners had banded together as a vigilante force to patrol the streets of Vega and Adrian. They never caught any criminals but nor were there any burglaries and robberies while they were on watch. By the beginning of 1976 the patrols had fizzled out and so there was no-one around but Larry when, after driving the Pontiac to work for the last time on the evening of 7th March, a 23-year-old Texan called Lewis Steven Powell entered the Standard Service Station. No-one knows what happened in those few minutes, whether Larry – proud of his hard work – refused to hand over his takings, but Powell made him kneel down and shot him in the back of the head before robbing the till.

The Pontiac Catalina in front of Joe Brownlee’s old Texaco gas station with, to the left, the Brownlee Diner, now often incorrectly called the Little Juarez Diner.

Powell was a high school graduate who had served four years in the Navy and never been arrested, received a speeding ticket or been suspected of any mental disorder. But Larry was the second man he had killed in 36 hours. The police were already hunting the killer of Clyde Franklin Helton near Dallas and just the next day Powell was apprehended after a shoot-out in Colorado. In a plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty and was sentenced to life in prison. Life, in this case, meant just seven years before he was eligible for parole, although there would be a 40-year sentence waiting for him in Colorado as a result of firing at police during his arrest. But again, 40 years was a vague figure. Powell has been a free man for some time, although I am pleased to say that, as of May 2017, he was back in custody due to parole violations.

Despite sitting for 40 years, the Pontiac still looks like the car Larry loved.

Larry never came home again, but his Pontiac Catalina did, and it keeps silent sentinel in Glenrio, perhaps looking after Roxann as much as her dogs and her son, grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Please remember, it’s not just another junk car parked for a Route 66 photo opportunity, respect the Private Property signs, it’s not for sale. It’s as much a part of Glenrio as Roxann Travis, and that is where it belongs.

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THE LITTLES OF HINTON JUNCTION

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In its prime, Hinton Junction could sell you gasoline, a meal, a night’s sleep and even a bus ticket.

These days, old Route 66 between Bridgeport and Hinton is a lonesome place. True, you know that Interstate-40 is rumbling away somewhere to the south, but here you’re on your own, your reverie on the old straight rolling concrete broken only by the glimpse of an occasional farmhouse or the moo of a curious cow.

But it wasn’t always so. Once this was a busy highway and the service station, cafe and motel belonging to the Littles of Hinton was a welcome sight for many travellers. Leon Little was born in 1911, the youngest of five children of James and Jennie Little. The Littles had something of a casual attitude to names, it seems. Leon was named Wilbur Leon, but, by the time his name was entered on the 1930 census, he had become simply Leon, while his brother went by the name of Robert or Boone, depending what form he was filling in.

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Leon and Ann start married life.

From the time he finished the 12th grade – and probably before – Leon worked in a service station, moving to Booker, Texas, in 1929 where he met a young lady by the name of Anna Louise Ondracek (although she was always known as Ann). When they married on 27th October 1932 in Booker, Texas, he had just turned 21 and Ann was 18. But, starting a business was important to them and, within months, they had bought an old gas station next to the swing bridge at Bridgeport on Route 66. Leon clearly realised just how vital an artery Route 66 was and, when it was realigned, he took the line that if the traffic wouldn’t come to him, then he would go to the traffic.

In 1934, a new bridge was opened over the South Canadian and Route 66 was rerouted. The Littles were already ahead of the game, building a new gas station at the west end of the bridge where Route 66 and Highway 281 met and opening it at the same time as the new alignment.

Leon (standing) oversees the construction of his new service station.

In 1940, the same year that his father died, Leon built a third station and added a cafe and a small motel. A larger house too was essential as by now the Littles had started a family. Bobby Dean was born in 1936 (puzzlingly he is referred to in the 1940 census as Baffie D), followed by Larry in 1944 and Charles the following year. For a short time they also had a young teacher, Pearl Delores Kerlick, boarding with the family before she got married, while, following ‘Jim’s’ death, Jennie Little would come to live with the family until she died in 1969.

The Littles had established that third station and motel when, in 1943, Leon received his draft papers. He was granted a 6-month deferment to get his affairs in order and so he leased the gas station, motel and cafe to GB Entz. Entz immediately shut Leon’s business down and opened his own in a new building. Ironically, by the time the six months were up, the US Government had set the upper limit of the draft at 30 years old. Leon was two years older than that and so he should have immediately picked his life and business up again. But he had made a contract with Entz and he honoured that. Instead, he spent the next couple of years working as a mechanic and tow truck driver in Texas. When the lease was up in 1945, he returned to Hinton and he and Ann began the job of rebuilding their business.

In his 50s, foreseeing the end of Route 66 and his business, Leon retrained as a US Postmaster,

This they did with determination and hard work. They also had a keen eye to providing good service for travellers. But Leon also knew that times were moving on and that the plans for the new interstate would make his business impossible to sustain. A year before I-40 bypassed Hinton, Leon had already made plans for his next career, training as a postmaster. He began work at the Hinton post office while Ann continued to run the business and then, in 1962, the interstate opened and Route 66 stopped. The Littles had opened their main business on the day that Route 66 took on its new alignment across the new bridge in 1934 and, with fitting symmetry, they closed it 26 years later on the very day that the interstate opened.

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This centre section is all that remains today of the gas station and cafe. There would have been a clock in the hole in the centre roofline, while the EAT sign was lost many years ago. The propane tanker hasn’t moved in at least 35 years.

However, hard work over those years had meant that Leon and Ann could put their boys through college as well as buy a house in Hinton. Until he retired, Leon worked at the post office and Ann worked as a receptionist for the Hinton Clinic. With sons and, later, grandchildren, Leon was involved in the local community, coaching Little League baseball and becoming a 32nd degree Mason. He died on 3rd February 1994 and Ann passed away at the end of 2006. They are both buried in the town they loved and served for so long.

Oh, and Leon clearly hated his given name all his life. Even on his gravestone in Hinton Cemetery he is listed only as W. LEON LITTLE!

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The gas station is falling down these days, but you can still see the old shelving and how it was back in the day.

THE FACTORY THAT NEVER WAS

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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.

11337060_885679411499894_6439798320751203696_oAt the time, it was supposed 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.

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. 11289489_885679418166560_1426846276698904044_o

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. 10988513_885679408166561_8010437174527010206_oThe company, however, announced its intention to continue, and then Pearl Harbor happened. Fuel rationing the following spring made it impossible for the company to transport its goods, even if it had been able to get the plant back up and running. It was abandoned, although some of the machine11139355_885679398166562_463181637644374783_nry remained for several years.

SNAKES ON A PLAIN

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Travelers through McLean in the Texas Panhandle, may be a little bemused – not to say anxious – about a large sign declaiming RATTLESNAKES that stands by the side of the road in the town.

Once this sign stood just off Route 66 near what became the Lela exit of I-40. Ernest Michael ‘Mike’ Allred had operated snake attractions along Oklahoma’s stretch of 66 for several years before setting up shop in Texas at Alanreed with his sister Addie as the Regal Reptile Ranch (he had another sister and two brothers who seem not to have shared their siblings’ love of reptiles and, in fact, all three ended up in California to put a few miles between themselves and their brother’s creatures!). However, when he and his sister fell out, he decamped with his snakes down the road to Lela, which is the site that the sign originally advertised. He set up home in a gas station owned by Conald Cunningham*, a place which had a huge neon steer adorning its roof, and it was Cunningham who erected the reptiles sign. It was originally a tall sign with RATTLESNAKES at the top and EXIT NOW below.

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This image is of E Mike Allred, but of a time when the Regal Reptile Ranch was in Erick, Sayre. Given that the Smithsonian Institution and the photographer, Steve Fitch, date this photo as 1972 and Allred appears to be an old man in the picture, then it seems his reptile attraction in Lela was probably rather short-lived.

When Allred died in 1979 at the age of eighty, Addie, who was still running her snake attraction in Alanreed, apparently either moved to operate the Lela concern or moved the Allred’s snakes to Alanreed, depending on which story you read. However, Addie continued to run a reptile attraction right into the 1980s, one of the last of the old time snake pits on Route 66. Some of Allred and his sister’s snakes (now pickled!), along with the yellow cobra that lured people off the highway, can been seen in the Devil’s Rope Museum in McLean

The old gas station was eventually dismantled, moved and became part of the Red River Steakhouse in McLean, although no-one seems to know what happened to the neon steer. The RATTLESNAKES sign continued to stand in its lonesome glory but was eventually blown down in 2007. It might have been lost forever without the work and determination of local writer, historian, carpenter, rancher, the guy who started the Texas Route 66 Museum (the first museum dedicated to the Mother Road) and all-round useful chap, Delbert Trew, who saw to its rescue. It’s now erected in a park on the north side of 1st Street between McCarty and Donley Streets, McLean.

*I’ve seen this gentleman’s name written as both ‘Conrad’ and ‘Conald’. I assumed the latter was a misprint of Donald or Ronald, but no, there is a Conald Cunningham buried in McLean and who was a member of the McLean Lions. However, according to his obituary, Conald Cunningham of Mclean worked in the USAF and then as a computer programmer.  The research goes on…

 

ARROWS OF TIME

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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.

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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

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

motorist and his injuries meant he had to sell the business. On 15th 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 8th 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.

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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.

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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 30th 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.

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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.

 

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The interior of the Valentine diner

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The rear of the trading post where there was living accommodation

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The decaying interior of the trading post

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

 

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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.

A COUNTERFEIT STORY

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

ooAlthough 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.

oooooooHowever, 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.

oooThe 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

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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 21st 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.

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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.

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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 1st 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.

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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.

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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

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Tulsa old and new - looking from the 11th Street Bridge to the city centre

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

There was a gate open – honest!

And, for the next 63 years, the 11th 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 11th 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 11th 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

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150076645.EoicnvWE.AGuideBookToHighway66

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 anne

JACK AND CHARLOTTE RITTENHOUSE WITH THEIR DAUGHTER ANNE AT HER GRADUATION