Preface: I’ve shown images from Kingman, Arizona in the past, but since it’s one of the towns named in the song “Route 66” and since it’s the town from which I started my drive to Oatman, I thought I should at least mention a couple things about it. Obviously, Kingman is proud of its long connection with the Mother Road and, yes, you’ll see lots of signs there with the number “66” on them. But, you might not know that Kingman is also proud of Andy Devine, its most famous former resident. If your ears don’t remember this actor’s raspy voice and you didn’t know that, among other roles, he was “Jingles,” the comic cowboy sidekick of Wild Bill Hickok, check out some short clips of Andy Devine on YouTube.
In the picture above on the right, you can see that Andy Devine Avenue, one of the main streets in Kingman, is Route 66. So, by staying on that road and ignoring the signs for I-40, I was heading southwest toward Oatman. I should mention, by the way, that it’s rather important to leave Kingman with a full tank of gas. Filling stations can be few and far between after you leave town!
Although the stretch of Route 66 from Kingman to Oatman starts out flat and fairly straight, it eventually becomes more serpentine. The road is paved and in pretty good shape so you don’t have to worry about potholes. According to the Bureau of Land Management, “[t]his 42-mile stretch of two-lane blacktop is one of the last and best-preserved segments of the original Route 66, one of America’s first transcontinental highways.” There are a few switchbacks, however, where you might want to pay more attention to the road than to the desert scenery.
My first stop along the road was at Cool Springs Camp and Service Station. So, you might be thinking, “I thought you just said that we need to get gas in Kingman!” You wouldn’t have had to back in the 1950s, but when this part of Route 66 was replaced with a safer, straighter section at that time, traffic disappeared along with the need for gasoline. Now this place is a museum and gift shop and the pumps are just relics from the past. But, don’t worry, Cool Springs does have a rest room!
After Cool Springs the drive gets much more fun. The elevation increases, the landscape becomes much more interesting, and the road really begins to twist and turn. In the map below you can see what the BLM calls “the hairpin curves and steep grades of Sitgreaves Pass” where Route 66 makes its way over the Black Mountains. They say that “flatland travelers” in the 1930s found this stretch to have “fearsome obstacles.” In my air-conditioned car with power steering and power brakes, I didn’t get too stressed. However, while descending from Sitgreaves Pass (Elev. 3550), a number of crosses standing quietly off the road next to a sharp curve reminded me that even new air-conditioned cars can go over a cliff.
As I cruised into town, I was surprised by how crowded the streets were for a Monday in early November. It must be a bunch of retired tourists! But there weren’t just people on the street, there were also many “beasts of burden.” Now, as some of you know, I grew up on a hog farm so I can identify pigs. Also, being from Wisconsin I can identify cows. But, were these animals mules or donkeys or burros? They certainly weren’t horses; I’ve watched enough westerns to identify horses! Some helpful online information said that “[i]n the United States the donkey has been used as a beast of burden and for the breeding of mules, which are hybrids produced by mating mares and jackasses. Small donkeys, or burros, played a major role as pack animals in opening up the western United States.” The burros in Oatman are wild and are descendants of the pack animals brought to the area by gold miners. They love to wander around town looking cute and begging for food, but signs warn visitors that they are wild and will bite and kick. So, in Oatman you can literally get you kicks on Route 66.
The Oatman Hotel Restaurant and Bar is an interesting and often crowded place to get a bite to eat. The walls and ceiling are covered with bills that are signed by the tourists who put them there. The hotel’s claim to fame is that, after being married in the Methodist Church in Kingman on March 18, 1939, Clark Gable and Carol Lombard honeymooned in Room 15 of the Oatman Hotel. Gable apparently liked the peacefulness of the place and often came back. Rumors are that his ghost haunts the place, so I guess he came back for one long final visit.
Oatman may not be as bad as New York City, but you do have to watch out for some pistol-packing outlaws fixin’ for a shootout! I got suspicious when a couple of hombres started yellin’ in the middle of the street. Was it High Noon? No, it was 2:18 PM! Alas, a bad guy bit the dust while we were there. Although I was standing right behind him, I escaped unscathed.
By the way, in 2026 Route 66 will be 100 years old. If you haven’t gotten your kicks yet, you might want to track down a remnant of this road in one of the eight states through which it passes. You can find much more information in any of the 284 books about Route 66 available on Amazon.com*.
*There are 284 books about Route 66 on Amazon as of the day of this post.
Who knows how many there will be in the future, especially as 2026 approaches.