Hidden History Along Route 66's Steepest Section - Crossing Sitgreaves Pass

Hello everyone, welcome to Sidetrack Adventures, this is Steve right now. I'm on Route 66 in Kingman Arizona where we have a train

pass

ing cars

pass

ing by on the road. I hope you can hear me, but today we will travel west of here. to what was once one of the most dangerous parts of Route 66, let's sit at Graves Pass where we're going to check out the

hidden

schaer Fishbowl Springs, so let's get in the car, get away from this noisy train and get out to Route 66. We started today at the Kingman Route 66 Visitor Center, which is a great place to start or end any Route 66 trip.

There's a pretty cool Route 66 Museum here, but since we're filming this On a Saturday of a holiday weekend, I want to go. the road before it gets too crowded today we will travel the part of Route 66 between Kingman and Oatman, the part then includes Greaves Pass. I mentioned that Greaves Pass is considered one of the most treacherous parts of Route 66, but sit back. The dueling past actually predates Route 66 by decades dating back to the 1850s. The highway runs through the Black Mountains and was originally built as Wagon Road by Edward Fitzgerald Beal following ancient Native American trails.

He named the pass John Howl's Pass in 1857 after one of the However, the men on his expedition must not have spread the word about the name because less than a year later, Lieutenant Joseph Christmas IES of the Core of Topographical Engineers named their pass of geves in honor of Captain Lorenzo's Greaves, who led an expedition up the Colorado and Zuni rivers. in 1851, while the pass was an important early

route

to and from California, by the late 1860s people could take the railroad west, so the road saw much less use by the time of With the first automobiles, most traffic was headed south, largely where Interstate 40 is now, however, when Route 66 was designated in 1926 thanks to some politicians and business owners in Oatman, it was

route

d to via Srees Pass instead of the easier road south.

We haven't reached the mountains yet, but we have arrived. through this rest stop I think I'll wait it out, it's actually a pretty well known photo stop so if we dare to look there's a good chance this will go wrong. We were lucky today, in the early 1930s, a man named James Walker moved in. with his family from Indiana to live in Arizona and settle here in Cool Springs Walker built eight sleeping cabins and ran the store's gas station. His wife cooked everything and his children also helped run things. A few years later, Walker left the station with Mrs.

Walker. Mrs. Walker would end up remarrying a man named Floyd Spadel and business here was quite good from World War II until the early 1950s, but this part of Route 66 would be bypassed in 1952 by that southbound highway that became Interstate 40 and the business dried up, perhaps taking a cue from her first husband, Mrs. Walker gave up paddle tennis leaving him with Cool Springs, then in the 1960s a fire burned the station to the ground and Cool Springs was no more; It was briefly rebuilt in 1991 for the movie Universal Soldier starring John Claude Vanam and Dolph Lungren but was blown up again in the movie in 2001 Ned Luchner bought the property and began restoring it and in 2004 the lights came back on here for the first time since 1966.

We are passing through. Ed's Campground is now named after Ed Ederton, it's private property so we can't stop, but this was a roadside campground where people could pitch a tent or sleep in their cars and it dates back to early 1920s. The camp eventually included a grocery store and a souvenir shop and passed Ed's Camp, where the road starts to get steep and you really start to take curves. This was actually the

steepest

part of all of Route 66, the grade getting as steep as 12% in some parts of the road because some early car engines were gravity fed if their gas tanks weren't deep enough. full, they couldn't actually get up the hill.

I've heard some drivers solve that by driving uphill in reverse, this is a blink you'll miss. It's a place on the way, the Schaer Fishbowl, this is the concrete type that holds the mountainside in place, but let's go ahead and climb the stairs. This place is more well known now than it used to be, but I think most people I pass still have no idea this is here, there are no signs of it at all and the stairs do a good job of blending into the supposed surroundings. The story goes that when the WPA was working on the highway in the 1930s, a man named Schaefer had this built to turn a natural spring into a place where water could be collected, but it is difficult to find historical information about it before the 1980s and no one seems to know anything about who Schaefer was, but here's the Schaer Fishbowl and you.

I can see why it's called a fish tank. Locals help keep the spring full of colorful fish and fish. I guess they help eat the algae and keep the water cleaner for the area. Wildlife such as burrows and sheep, and there are quite a few goldfish there today. Here's a look back. The road we came down doesn't seem so steep now, but in the 1920s it was brutal, especially in the summer. The path is still quite steep, but we are actually not far from the summit now and have reached the top. Sit Greeves Summit Elevation of Pass 3,550 feet Due to the way the road is cut, the view from here is not the best, but there is actually a great overlook about 4 mile to the west that we will stop at just one minute a day.

A long time ago there used to be a gas station here at the summit, but it's long gone. You can still see some remains, although it's okay, we are at the viewpoint near the summit and, over the years, this place has become a kind of makeshift memorial, it looks like a cemetery, but in reality no one He's buried here, at least I hope no ashes are scattered here, it's quite common, although most memorials are quite simple, but there are some that are quite elaborate. I'm pretty sure we also passed an N and there's Route 66 going downhill toward Oakman.

There may be hundreds of these monuments, but I can see why people would want to scatter their ashes here. The view from here is excellent and you can see three. states Arizona California and Nevada in the book Grapes of Wrath after traveling through here and reaching the Colorado River P jod looked back and said these mountains look like the bones of a country, well if he came today maybe he would say the ashes, unfortunately For those early road travelers coming down the Sit Greve road to the west it was just as bad because it was still steep and still had more hairpin bends to come down the western side of S Graves Pass, there are some ruins here, this is what remains of the town of Gold Road Gold was found in the area in 18 1999 and a town arose here, it was a mine company town and when the mine closed in 1942 the town died shortly after I had I have to stop at this sharp bend.

There is an old postcard and the photo it contains was taken practically from this same place. Here are our first burrows of the day. I have never driven on this road and have not come across some. You can usually find several of them in Oatman. waiting to be fed, but I have a feeling there may be too many people there today. It seems we have arrived at rush hour. I'm not sure where they all came from. There weren't even that many people on the road. So we come to Oatman, but that's another video for another time when it's not a holiday weekend, but thanks so much for watching.

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