A Piece of Route 66 Comes Back to Life-- Part 1

From the October 19, 2014, Chicago Tribune by Jay Jones.

An interesting update on one of my favorite Route 55 towns, Williams, Arizona.

"Thirty years ago, people in Williams were mourning Route 66.  The world famous highway officially met its demise as Interstate Highway 40 bypassed this northern Arizona town-- the last town along the entire route to be bypassed.

"'Our street was just one big, giant truck stop,' Mayor John Moore recalled of the decades in which the big rigs motored into town.

"That changed in the blink of an eye October 13, 1984, with the opening of the final stretch of I-40.  Before long, businesses began to close.  The town was in a tailspin."

I hadn't realized that we slopped by the anniversary of the end of Route 66 earlier this month.  I always felt that Williams more or less served as the inspiration for the fictional Radiator Springs in the movie "Cars."

--RoadDog