Ash Fork, Arizona
Near Williams, Arizona
Ash Fork, in Yavapai County, began in October eighteen eighty-two when the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad pushed through and named its new station for the ash trees growing on the plateau. The railroad superintendent F.W.
Smith chose the name. Ash Fork became a division point on what would later be the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe line, and for decades it was a significant crew-change stop on transcontinental rail traffic. Route Sixty-Six later ran straight through town and brought another wave of motel and diner economy.
Ash Fork carries the official title of Flagstone Capital of the World, a designation made official by the Arizona House of Representatives in two thousand fourteen, recognizing the sandstone quarries in the surrounding hills that have supplied paving and building stone across the Southwest for more than a century. Several of the town's surviving storefronts and motels are themselves built from local flagstone, making the place a kind of advertisement for its own industry.
