Skip to main content

Route 66 Wednesdays; Standin' on the corner in Winslow, Arizona

Back in 2012, I drove a former section of US Route 66 in the City of Winslow located in Navajo County, Arizona.


Winslow, much like many of the communities in Arizona that were along US Route 66, was originally sidings of the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad.  Winslow first appears on the 1882 2nd Operating Division Map of the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad.

A&P 2nd Operating Division Railroad Map

While I'm uncertain of the exact path the National Old Trails Road and early US 66 took through downtown Winslow it would have approached heading eastbound on 3rd Street.  Today Arizona State Route 99 is signed along Historic US 66 on 2nd Street eastbound entering downtown Winslow.


Through downtown Winslow, US 66 would have split onto 2nd Street for eastbound traffic and 3rd Street for westbound.  At the intersection of 3rd Street and Kinsley Avenue is Standin' on a Corner Park which is easily spotted by the large US Route 66 shield painted at the intersection.


Standin' on a Corner Park essentially is just a city monument named after the 1972 Eagles song "Take it Easy."  Standin' on a Corner Park essentially is just a facade but the shield looks pretty cool from an aerial view.  Standin' on a Corner Park opened in 1999.






At Williamson Avenue, AZ 99 and AZ 87 currently splits south out of the city.  East of Williamson Avenue AZ 87 assumes the 2nd/3rd Street alignment of US Route 66 out of the City of Winslow.

Along 2nd Street east of Williamson Avenue is the 1930 La Posada Hotel which is a Harvey House.  The La Posada also serves as the current Amtrak Station for the City of Winslow.




East of downtown Winslow US 66 would have merged back onto 3rd Street and crossed the Little Colorado River.  Winslow was one of the last cities in Arizona to be bypassed by I-40.  Construction on the Winslow Bypass started in 1977, I'm uncertain when it was completed. 


Site Navigation:

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

  There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population.  The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

  Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third