Category Archives: Culture

Birthplace of Historic Route 66

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Seligman is another town on the Arizona segment of Route 66 that was impacted when the Mother Road was decommissioned and traffic went to the nearby Interstate 40 instead. Even though it is located pretty close to an exit on the Interstate highway, most travelers would drive past the town unless they needed to stop for rest stop, and the town became just like any other exits on the long Interstate highway where the focus for the travelers was to get to the destination in the shortest amount of time possible.

In 1987, a longtime Seligman resident, Angel Delgadillo, started a petition with several other Route 66 enthusiasts requesting the state of Arizona to designate the segment of the road between Seligman and Kingman as a historic route. The Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona was founded with the goal to preserve the rich history and cultural influence of the road and where travelers could still experience what it was like to drive on this route as it was in the past. By 1990, similar organizations were started in the other states on Route 66, and now all segments of Route 66 in Arizona and significant portions in the other states are marked as Historic Route thanks to the grass root efforts from these local activists. In many places, you can meet people like Mr. Delgadillo who are happy to share their knowledge or even life experience meeting travelers who passed by the Mother Road. They could be attraction in themselves in addition to visiting the landmarks.

When we reached Kingman after the drive through the old Route 66 from Needles, CA, it’s already dark and we still had quite some distance to cover for the day. So we decided to get back on the Interstate to go at higher speed. It was close to dinner time, so we decided to stop in Seligman, the next town we knew of from the guidebooks that seemed to have good dining options.

We decided to eat at a place that had curious name, the Road Kill Cafe. We wondered if they actually indeed served road kills (animals that got killed on the road accidentally). It turned out that they simply named their dishes as if they were prepared with road kill meats; I’m not sure if they would be allowed by law to serve those for health reasons. The place itself had character with its quirky decorations, definitely making it a unique place to stop (certainly better than eating at generic fast food chain restaurant).

It turned out that there were some interesting places in Seligman where you could meet locals like Mr. Delgadillo who could tell you stories about the Mother Road. However, it was already pretty late on a Sunday night by the time we were done with dinner, and we still had at least three hours of driving that we wanted to cover for the day. So we stopped by at a nearby gift shop to take photo from the outside while we filled up our gas tank, and then we continued on our road trip. You can see on the photo below that they definitely had quite a selection of Route 66 memorabilias there.

Route 66 gift shop

Rest Stop in the Desert

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When you’re driving from the east on the Arizona segment of Route 66 between Kingman and Oatman, the highway transitioned from a drive on a flat plains of the Sacramanto Valley from Kingman to a treacherous climb up through the Black Mountains near Oatman. In the old days, this was quite intimidating for the travelers as they would have to go through a narrow road with steep grades and hairpin turns. Some people even hired locals to drive their cars through these area or even tow their cars to the summit.

Just before you start the climb, there was rest stop called Cool Springs that was was opened up as a place for the travelers to check their cars or fueled up before they tackle the challenging terrain, or for those who traveled from the west, a stop to rest after going through mountainous road. A family from Indiana opened and ran the litte shop since the 1930s and handed the property over through a couple generations through the heyday of Route 66 in the 1950s. By early 1960s, however, the new alignment of Route 66 that bypassed the segment through the Black Mountains, and then later the development of the Interstate highway ended up killing the traffic through this road. And finally in the mid 1960s, a fire burned down the rest stop building reducing it to ruins.

In 1997, an Illinois man named Ned Leuchtner passed the area and was very impressed with the landscape around it. He wondered what ever happened to the place when he saw the ruins of Cool Springs, and through the help of a local real estate broker, he was able to find the owner of the property and learned the story about the place. After three years persuading the old owner to sell the property to him, he finally was able to get the property with his promise to rebuild the place. From 2001 to 2004, Ned worked to restore Cool Springs to what it was like back in its heyday, and in 2005, the restoration was complete and the place was reopened as a museum. Now travelers can see what the place looked like decades ago when this was an important stop on the old route to the West.

From Oatman, we traveled east through the Black Mountain towards Cool Springs. So in our case, we went through the Black Mountains route in reverse and it was mostly negotiating steep downhill drive through narrow roads with hairpin turns that definitely lived up to the description we read in guidebooks. Fortunately we managed to go through this segment when it’s still light outside. It was quite beautiful as well to see the sun setting in the distance as we drove through the mountainous region.

When we reached Cool Springs, the place was not open and we were pretty much by ourselves. We stopped there to admire the scenery and took some photos of the old rest stop, the restored gas pump, and some architectural details on the facility that showed the quality of the restoration that was done at the place. There was also an old Ford pick up truck parked outside the building, adding an authentic feel to the scenery. Unfortunately we didn’t get to meet some of the folks that made this happen, but it was a cool stop nevertheless.

The photo below was taken from across the street of the building. You could see the picturesque mountains behind the building.

Cool Springs

Burros at the Old West Town

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Oatman is a small town in the Black Mountains in northwestern Arizona. It is located in a remote area, but the town has quite an illustrious history.

It started as a tent camp soon after two prospectors found $10 million worth of gold in nearby area in 1915. The town was named after Olive Oatman, an Illinois-native woman who was abducted by an Indian tribe, kept as a slave, traded to another Indian tribe, and later released near the site of the town of Oatman.

Later on, the Oatman Hotel in town became famous as the place where famous Holywood actors Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent their honeymoon after getting married in nearby Kingman, AZ. Supposedly Clark Gable enjoyed spending time playing poker with the miners in the town.

During the heyday of Route 66, the town became a tourist attraction because of its colorful history and its location that is right on the old Route 66. After the Interstate 40 was opened and it bypassed the Route 66 segment in Black Mountains area, it almost became a ghost town. Today it regained its popularity as a tourist attraction as there is more interests on the Historic Route 66. There is also a nearby gambling town in Nevada that runs tourist groups to visit Oatman on regular basis.

After following the road markers on a seemingly dead end road, we started a gradual climb in the Black Mountains area. And around a bend suddenly we saw a sign to welcome us to Oatman. As we reached the main street of the town, we noticed some interesting sights. Here was an old town that looked like what you see in old wild west movie settings — except this is a real deal. That we expected already from reading about Oatman before the trip. We also saw a couple of big coach buses with tourists. I was expecting to see tourists, but not in big coach buses like that. It was quite a contrast comparing the old town with its off the beaten path road and two modern coach buses there.

The most unexpected sight was seeing several burros (wild donkeys) roaming around the town. Apparently these burros were descendants of the burros used by gold prospectors back almost a century ago. They had been released and lived in the wild, and are actually protected by law. In Oatman, they were freely roaming the main street, and apparently they knew to look for tourists with food who were willing to feed them. The local gift shop sold a bag of carrots for $1 that you could buy and feed the burros with.

My brother and I stopped and walked around the area for a little bit before continuing our journey. On some days, there were reenactment of wild west gun fight on the main street, but there was nothing going on when we were there.

The photo below was taken outside a curio shop off the main street of Oatman. You can see a couple of local shopkeepers with the burros in front of their shop.

Shopkeepers and the burros

Life is a Highway

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We started our coast-to-coast road trip with a visit to the Santa Monica Pier to find the official west end of Route 66. We found the official plaque that marked the end of the road. The actual Route 66 itself now only exists in segments, so we used a couple of books on Route 66 that traces the route along today’s modern highway.

Before leaving LA area, we made a couple of stops, first in Beverly Hills area to attend a service at Mosaic, then on the way out of suburban LA we stopped in Monterey Park to eat lunch in the Chinatown area. After lunch, we’re off for our first day of the trip.

We had roughly five days to complete the journey from Santa Monica to New York City. So, on the first day, our target was to reach somewhere in northeastern part of Arizona. Along the way, we wanted to take a segment of the old Route 66 in Arizona that according to the books on Route 66 still provided good representation of what it was like in the heyday of the Mother Road. Since the route supposedly went through pretty steep incline/decline grade on the mountains, we thought it would be a good idea to try reaching the area before it gets dark.

The road we took that afternoon consisted several segment that were pretty much a straight shot drive. It could get boring after a while and I found myself keeping myself alert by listening to songs, observing what’s around, or thinking about something. The first part of the trip in the eastern California towards Arizona reminded me to the song Life is a Highway by Rascal Flatts. The first part of the song went like this:

Well, life’s like a road that you travel on
There’s one day here and the next day gone
Sometimes you bend, sometimes you stand
Sometimes you turn your back to the wind

I did think about the lyrics of the song above and how that might be a good metaphor of what life is like as the song suggests. I think there is some good pictures there.

When driving on a highway, at times we go through straight segment where we can go fast, and then we encounter curves where we have to slow down. Life also goes like that. At times, things go well and we can progress fast. At other times, we face obstacles or challenges and we have to slow down the progress or even take a step back.

On the highway, we might pass other automobiles with people going to different destinations and with different reasons of traveling — some for leisure, others for business, and yet others for other different reasons. Some are still in the early part of their journey, others are already close to the end of theirs. Similarly, with life we encounter different people who are in the middle of life journey to achieve certain goals (studying at school, building a career, starting a family, retiring, etc.), and they might be at different stages of getting towards their goal.

Another interesting metaphor is to think about how one goes through the journey. On the highway, you can focus on getting to the destination in the shortest amount of time, and end up seeing the journey as the necessary means to reach the end (the travel experience becomes a blur or, worse, an exhausting experience you just want to get over with). Or, you can also have a destination and a plan / route to get there, but consider the journey as part of the experience to remember and even look forward to. It may not get you to the end in the fastest way possible, but you enjoy the journey more.

That was essentially the theme of Pixar’s animated movie Cars. As I did my planning before the trip, I came to learn that the inspiration for the movie was Route 66, its history, and many people who live along the road. Behind the great animation and funny characters there was a great story and message about cherishing life’s journey and the people you share it with.

I took the photo below during the drive on one of those long, straight stretches on I-40 eastbound. You can see the straight road, and other cars around us. One car in front of us had a U-Haul trailer on the back; it’s likely someone who was in the middle of a journey to move to new place, just like my brother.

Life is a highway

A Community of Faith, Love, and Hope

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One of the hardest things about moving to a new city is that you have to adjust to the new place and find things that can help making it feel like home. This is even more challenging when you don’t know anyone in the new city; relationships have to be established if you don’t want to be lonely in your new place. When my brother moved to Los Angeles area, he practically didn’t know anyone there. One thing that was helpful for him however was being plugged in to Mosaic, his church community there.

Mosaic called itself a community of faith, love, and hope. It is unique as it emphasizes outreach to the community in Los Angeles area in a relevant manner. They recognized that many people like my brother come to LA area from everywhere around US and even from other countries, looking to make a living in this sprawling city. For these newcomers, Mosaic provides a community that these newcomers can belong to where they can be respected and cared for regardless of where they came from. They also see many people coming to LA to be involved in creative fields (visual arts, performing arts, fashion, etc.), so there is also a thriving artist community within the church body that encourages people to use their art as means to worship. All of these were provided to reach out and build a community of people who share (or seek to learn about) the faith, caring and loving for others in the community, and help providing message of hope to those who might be living in what seem to be a dead-end, meaningless life.

Before my brother moved to LA, I had heard of Mosaic because of its outreach to various ethnic groups in LA. But my appreciation for its ministry increased as I experienced the community when attending their Sunday service / meeting. It really felt like a home away from home. You could tell that most of the attendees were ‘transplants,’ but for that one hour, it felt like you’re among friends and family, and you’re welcomed even if it’s your first time attending.

Before we left Los Angeles to start our coast-to-coast trip, we decided to attend the Sunday morning service at Mosaic. One last service, fitting for my brother to say goodbye to the community that was his family away from home during his couple of years living in LA. I took the photo below during that service. This was Erwin McManus, Mosaic’s leader and principal teacher, giving his message during the service.

Erwin McManus