Kingman was built around Route 66, quite a few miles of the road are right through town. The street has been renamed Andy Devine Avenue, for the actor who grew up here.
This photo is on the top of the old hotel, but it has been closed down. Beale Street is another main street in town, named for Lieutenant Edward Beale. The Lieutenant did a survey for the railroad in the late 1800s and was part of the military camel expedition that I wrote about in a blog last month. The people who built the original Route 66 used much of the route that Lt. Beale surveyed and the railroad running close to the road is still heavily used today. Below is a photo of the monument to Lieutenant Beale in the park - note the camels on the top.
There are many of these Route 66 signs in the middle of the road in a few places. I don't know if they were original and have just been maintained or they're new.
This steam locomotive is in the park and is massive. It was built in 1927 and did between 52-60 MPH between here and Kansas. The wheels on this are about 5' across and the whole thing weighs over 468,000 pounds, including the tender, which carried water for power.
Many of the towns here have these water tanks and most of them have the name on them, sometimes other information. Kingman is proud of their Route 66 section and has a Route 66 museum right at the visitor center.
This is a fun sign - it's on the building housing the visitor center and Route 66 Museum. In order to have all the numbers repetitive, they posted the sign up about 12 feet from the ground!
It's amazing how much is missed when schedules must be met. I spent over a month in Kingman on a project I worked on...wiring the new 16 x 16 x 60 foot long spray booth for the new Interstate Cargo Trailer manufacturing facility that was built there in 2003. All we had time for was to head for the motel on Monday morning, work, go out to eat after work and then head back to Mesa on Friday. I never got to see any of this neat stuff, and didn't even know it existed. But after this fall, anything is possible. We will return at some point and check out many things that we passed by in previous trips. Great pictures, and thanks for showing these neat places.
ReplyDeleteThanks! And don't forget to ride up to Hackberry the store is amazing with all the stuff around it. And inside. Enjoy!
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