Seligman, Where Route Sixty-Six Was Saved

Seligman is a small town on the high desert plateau of northern Arizona, and it is where the modern preservation of Route Sixty-Six began. When Interstate Forty bypassed Seligman in nineteen seventy-eight, the old road through town went quiet and businesses closed one by one. In nineteen eighty-seven, a barber named Angel Delgadillo rallied his neighbors to fight back.

They formed the Historic Route Sixty-Six Association of Arizona, lobbied the state, and Arizona designated the stretch from Seligman to Kingman as Historic Route Sixty-Six, the first Historic Route Sixty-Six designation. Arizona now has the longest continuous uninterrupted stretch of the original road anywhere, nearly one hundred sixty miles. Seligman and the Delgadillo family are also credited as the real-world inspiration for the Disney film Cars, and the fictional town of Radiator Springs.