This year marks the centennial of Route 66, the famous Main Street of America from Chicago to Los Angeles. The road spanned northern Arizona, including what would become Petrified Forest National Park.
Early travelers left signs of their passage in forms that would be frowned upon today, especially in a national park.
Museum of Northern Arizona archaeologist David Purcell and crew have finished a five-year survey of six miles of the highway within the park. What they found tells a different story from the romantic portrayal of movie and song.
More than 11,000 objects were documented in roadside trash mounds during the survey—a large percentage was liquor bottles, beer cans, auto parts, and wrecked vehicles.
Travel was difficult and accidents so frequent the road earned the nickname Bloody 66. It closely paralleled the Beale Wagon Road of the 1850s, the tracks of the Santa Fe railroad, and the National Old Trails Highway. In Petrified Forest it threaded a narrow neck of land to avoid a high ridge and a muddy crossing of the Puerco River.
Petrified Forest, then a newly enlarged national monument, had a small staff and only rudimentary check stations along Route 66. After paying 50 cents for an annual permit, visitors marveled at the colorful Painted Desert, but also took souvenirs of petrified wood, and apparently got their kicks with generous quantities of alcohol.
Route 66 has plenty of stories to tell—sometimes romantic, sometimes reality.
This Earth Note was written by Rose Houk and produced by KNAU and the Sustainable Communities Program at Northern Arizona University.
