Williams, Arizona, Last Town on Route 66

Williams, Arizona, at an elevation of nearly seven thousand feet in the Kaibab National Forest, holds a small but definite place in American road history: on October thirteenth, nineteen eighty-four, it became the last town in the United States to be bypassed by an Interstate, the final stretch of Route Sixty-Six to be decommissioned. Bobby Troup, who wrote the song Get Your Kicks on Route Sixty-Six in nineteen forty-six, attended the ceremony. The historic business district dates to around eighteen ninety, when the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad reached here and loggers, ranchers, and tourists heading for the Grand Canyon turned the place into a working frontier town. Today it markets itself as the gateway to the South Rim, and the Grand Canyon Railway still runs steam-era trains from Williams depot north to the canyon rim.