Route 66 to Caverns...

I firmly believe that I was born in the wrong decade. I have such a fondness for the era that was Route 66 in its heyday.


We detoured off the 'new' road in order to see the Walnut Canyon Bridge in Winona, Arizona. This historic 101-foot Parker Truss steel bridge, completed in June 1924, is famous for being part of early U.S. Route 66.


Even roadside parks evoke a different era. I loved this rocket. I'm pretty certain I played on one just like it in my youth.





Williams offered us a pit stop at Pete’s Route 66 Gas Station Museum, a vintage gem. This restored 1949 gas station is more than just a photo op—it’s a little museum dedicated to Route 66 and the heyday of classic service stations.

This selection of artifacts made me laugh. Did you ever do the "Prince Albert in a can" joke, a classic prank call that originated in the mid-20th century? The caller asks a store clerk, "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?" When the clerk says "Yes" (referring to the tobacco brand), the caller replies, "Then you'd better let him out!". It relies on misinterpreting the tobacco product as the historic prince. Good times!





Our final Route 66 tourist destination was the Grand Canyon Caverns (the largest dry canyon in America). It has been over 30 years since we've been here. Our 35 year old was too young to go at the time. Wow.
The Grand Canyon Caverns are a type of cave known as "dry sulfuric kärst cave". Kärst means an area where limestone has been eroded to produce sinkholes, caves, cracks, tunnels, or caverns. They are 350 Million years old and date back to the Paleozoic Era, to the Late Devonian period.
They were discovered, in 1927, by chance when a heavy rainfall widened a natural sinkhole and Walter Peck, a woodcutter of the Santa Fe railroad almost fell into it. He returned with some men and using a rope and a lantern explored the cave below. It seemed to shine in the dark and he thought he'd found a gold mine. When he found that it wasn't gold, entrepreneur Peck changed his plans on the go, and started charging 25¢ for tourists to visit. For years visitors descended one at a time using a primitive rope and pulley system: the locals called it Walter Peck's "dope-on-a-rope tour".
Some time during the 1930s, they were renamed "Coconino Caverns" and shortly after, in 1936, the Civilian Conservation Corps program built a wooden staircase allowing more people to visit the site (the fee went up to 50¢) at that time it was operated by Stanley Wakefield. The place was renamed once again in 1957, now it became the "Dinosaur Caverns".
Under new ownership in 1962, a new shaft was blasted in the limestone and an elevator was installed. The place was called "Grand Canyon Caverns" and the motel, caverns complex and gas station became "Dinosaur City". During the cold war years, from 1950 to 1960, there was a dinosaur-mania period that saw several dinosaur movies released. This probably prompted Victor Leon to rename the spot Dinosaur City and place dinosaur statues here. One of them is a 12-foot tall T-Rex, and it is still here guarding the entrance to the caves and allowing cheesy photo ops.


For 40 years, visitors were allowed to take self guided tours. We were happy to have Charles escort us down 21 stories to lead us through the vastness with stories, history, and humor for over an hour.

During our visit we ogled a mummified 150 year-old remains of a bobcat. We oohed and aahed at a re-creation of an 18,000 year old Ground Sloth (Megalonyx jeffersonii) whose bones were found in the cave. And we marveled at each cavern we entered, especially knowing we were 200 - 300 feet below the surface.





The caves were once designated as a fallout shelter in the event of a nuclear strike on the US and a cosmic ray detector was placed in the caverns in 1969 as part of a research project of the University of New Mexico. Cool stuff.



This is difficult to see but it intrigues me, none-the-less. This is the original chute, coming from the surface, in which concrete was dropped, into the wheelbarrow, to make all the paved paths we traversed. Pretty amazing engineering for 1957. Wow.
The Visitor Center has a small museum and it showcases items found in the Cavern over the years.

My son had no idea what these cubes were. Talk about a flashback. I can almost hear the sound it made and the odor that followed.
I appreciated the fact that there was a camera there to show what the flash was all about. This visit was a trip down Memory Lane for many reasons.
We didn't have to go far to camp. Located right on the grounds is the Grand Canyon Caverns Campground. What an idyllic spot for our final night on Route 66.

posted under | 0 Comments

A Crater, an Eagles Song & More...

Since we are retracing a path we look when our sons were young, it follows that our next stop would be Meteor Crater.

The story of the crater is the story of scientific discovery, and of the heated debates and complex personal histories that make discovery possible. It is a story about how we have come to understand our world, and it begins 50,000 years ago, high above the Arizona desert.
The meteor weighed 300,000 tons and traveled at a speed of 26,000 miles per hour. When it struck the earth in what is now northern Arizona, it exploded with the force of 2 ½ million tons of TNT, or about 150 times the force of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Most of the meteor was melted by the force of the impact, and spread across the landscape in a very fine, nearly atomized mist of molten metal. Millions of tons of limestone and sandstone were blasted out of the crater, covering the ground for a mile in every direction with a blanket of shattered, pulverized and partially melted rock mixed with fragments of meteoritic iron.
Although meteorite falls had been observed for hundreds of years, until the twentieth century no one had ever identified a crater created by a meteorite. Most scientists rejected the possibility of such a crater, believing that all natural landforms had been created slowly, over thousands or even millions of years, rather than in a single catastrophic moment.

The Crater is named for Daniel Moreau Barringer, a Philadelphia mining engineer who became convinced that the crater was the result of a large meteorite striking the earth, contradicting the most eminent scientists of his time. A self-taught geologist, Barringer spent several years studying the crater and providing the initial proof of its origin. Though he never found the fortune in meteoritic iron he was convinced lay beneath the floor of the crater, Barringer’s theory of the crater’s origin was eventually vindicated and accepted by the scientific community.
Visiting here gave us an opportunity to learn more and to take in the view of the best-preserved meteor crater in America!


This is the mining operation Mr. Barringer ran in hopes of mining meteoritic iron. The white area is the opening to a shaft that travels 200 feet down. Without great success, a specialist was brought in who determined that the energy of the impact would have resulted in the total vaporization of the meteorite itself. All hopes of riches from this endeavor were quashed but a wonderful tourist attraction still exists!

We were mesmerized by the exciting, introduction film, ‘Impact: The Mystery of Meteor Crater', which covers the history and geology of this impact and describes how it was eventually proven to be a meteorite impact site through the work of Daniel M. Barringer. This same process is now used worldwide to assist in proving other impact sites. It explains how meteors are formed and what causes them to go off course and head toward the earth. What fun (and a little scary).

No one can say our trips aren't diverse. Meteorites, oh my!
Route 66 celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, marking a century since its establishment on November 11, 1926. What a treat to find ourselves on the Mother Lode. This historic 2,448-mile highway stretching from Chicago to Santa Monica traverses eight states—Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California and it features iconic neon signs, vintage motels, and diners. We've blogged this road before and will again, I'm certain.
A first, however, was to find ourselves, "a-standin' on the corner in Winslow, Arizona with such a fine sight to see. It's a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford slowin' down to take a look at me. Come on baby, don't say maybe..."
This corner is has immortalized the song "Take It Easy". Released in 1972 as the Eagles' debut single, it was written primarily by Jackson Browne with crucial help from Glenn Frey. While Browne was struggling with writer's block, neighbor Frey added the famous "flatbed Ford" verse, helping turn the song into an iconic country-rock anthem that launched the band's career. The song is inspired by a mix of experiences, including a time Browne's car broke down, and another incident involving a girl in a truck, potentially in Winslow or Flagstaff, Arizona.


We had been learning a lot about the native people, while on this trip. How fortunate to wander into an event for the grandchildren to experience it all firsthand.
There are 11 federally recognized tribes that have deep, historic, and spiritual ties to the land and resources within Grand Canyon National Park, many of whom still consider it their homeland.

After a delicious (and filling) dinner at Shorty's Olde Town Grill, we needed a stroll. Our destination was La Posada.
Built in 1929 by my new favorite, previously mentioned architect, Mary Jane Colter, the 11-acre grounds, hotel, and train station that make up La Posada Historic District are, in their own right, historic. But an additional layer of history is here, one invented in the imagination of the Ms Colter. In order to design the La Posada complex, she made up a century and a half of history for the site. She imagined La Posada as a Spanish rancho of the early 1800s. Here lived a wealthy Spanish don. When the don and his family fell on hard times, the hacienda was renovated into a hotel with furnishings and grounds intact. In such an inaccessible location, Colter reasoned, materials and labor would have been local. The complex would have been changed and added onto through generations.
With this story in mind, she designed Mission Revival buildings with adobe walls, complete with niches for saints, roofs of red terra cotta, and windows with wooden shutters and iron rejas (grilles). Floors were flagstone, and exposed ceiling beams were covered with branches to simulate indigenous adobe construction. There were period maids’ costumes and dinner china, vigas (protruding wooden beams) beneath the gables, wrought-iron railings on the stairways, clay tiles on the chimneys, sand-blasted planks on the doors, and a wishing well in the garden. Best of all in this elaborate history-within-a-history confection, Colter faked an archeological site--the supposed ruins of an old fort that had stood on the site before the don built his hacienda.

Her efforts were a great success. This place was truly amazing.




Planned just before the stock market crash of 1929, La Posada was the last of the great railroad hotels. Colter, who designed many Harvey hotels along with marvelously imaginative hotels in the Grand Canyon, always considered La Posada her best work. The hotel opened in May of 1930, at the beginning of the Great Depression. Sadly, it had a short run in the limelight. During the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, passengers abandoned trains and took to cars. Declining numbers of travelers arrived at the train station attached to the hotel, and, despite a 1940's boost due to railroad shipments of troops entering the Second World War, La Posada ultimately failed. It lasted longer than many of the grand railroad hotels, which went out of business during the Depression years, but closed by the end of the 1950s. The railroad converted La Posada into office space, installing new walls and lowering the ceilings, and La Posada’s future remained tenuous for the next 40 years.

We were there to witness the pure talent of the owners who purchased it in 1997 and restored it to all its glory. The work continues today. The gardens are back, guest rooms are open, and fireplaces, faux-adobe walls, arched ceilings, and period furnishings awaited our visit. I'd like to return to Winslow, not only sing Eagles' songs, but to stay here, too.
𝅘𝅥𝅮You know we got it easy. We oughta take it easy.𝅘𝅥𝅮

posted under | 0 Comments
Older Posts
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Get new Blog Posts to your inbox. Just enter name and email below.

 

We respect your email privacy

Blog Archive


Recent Comments