Riches, Ruin, and Recovery: The Impact of Route 66 on Flagstaff, 1926—1938

The on-going Saturday Evening Slide Presentation Series brings Historian John Southard to the visitors’ center at the Riordan Mansion on February 9th at 7 PM. Mr. Southard’s presentation is titled “Riches, Ruin, and Recovery: The Impact of Route 66 on Flagstaff, 1926 — 1938″.

Based on an award-winning Arizona Centennial Conference paper that will be published in a 2013 edition of The Journal of Arizona History, Southard’s talk will focus on Route 66 in Flagstaff from the time of its 1926 designation as a federal highway until its end-to-end paving project was completed in 1938. While the highway initially brought great hopes of tourist dollars and economic expansion, the onset of the Great Depression and its related transient traffic along the trail caused many Flagstaff residents to rue their location along America’s Main Street. However, just as the transcontinental auto path spurred pre-Depression economic growth in Flagstaff, it also helped the community to recover from the throes of the Depression sooner than similarly sized towns not located along what would become America’s most-famed roadway.