Flagstaff Route 66

16 Landmarks1.3 Miles100 Years of History

Route 66 Landmarks in Downtown Flagstaff, Arizona

Each landmark tells a chapter of the Mother Road's story. Explore them all, then walk them with a guide.

Heritage Square and The Flagpole

Heritage Square's winding brick path tells Flagstaff's history in plaques and monuments, from the Native communities who walked this corridor for centuries to the lumber barons, astronomers, and priests who fought to bring Route 66 through their mountain town. This is where it all starts.

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Babbitt Brothers

The Babbitt Brothers Mercantile once stretched an entire city block. Five brothers from Ohio played major roles in growing Flagstaff from a settlement into a city. Their trading posts on the Reservation became some of Route 66's most complicated landmarks, and this corner became one of its most famous film locations.

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Beale Wagon Road Corridor

Before Route 66 existed, before the railroad, before Arizona was a state, people traveled this same corridor along the 35th parallel. In 1857, Lt. Edward Beale brought camels from Syria to survey what became the first federal road west. He was following paths that had been walked for centuries.

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Route 66 Neon Signs

The neon signs that still glow along Route 66 in Flagstaff are not reproductions. They are survivors of a 1930s sign war between Southside motels fighting for visibility after the highway was rerouted. Each one tells a story about the businesses, the travelers, and the era that made the Mother Road legendary.

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Train Depot and The Riordans

The Flagstaff Train Depot turns 100 the same year as Route 66. When the first train came through in 1882 and stopped at an old boxcar, it signaled the town's beginnings. Three weeks later, the Ayer Lumber Mill started turning, and the Riordan family arrived to build not just a mill, but a city.

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Route 66 Living Road

In most Route 66 towns, the old road is a relic. In Flagstaff, it is still the road. People drive it to work, to school, to the grocery store. At the Route 66 centennial floor mural near the train station, you are standing on an active, living piece of the Mother Road.

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The Good Roads Movement

Before Route 66 could exist, Americans had to want roads. In the 1880s, bicyclists were the first to demand better infrastructure. By 1912, the Daughters of the American Revolution joined forces to create the National Old Trails Road, the direct precursor to Route 66 through Flagstaff.

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Father Cyprian Vabre

Father Cyprian Vabre was born in southern France, ordained a priest, and came to Arizona in 1896 with one dream: to be a missionary to the Native Americans. The church had other plans. But Vabre's lobbying helped bring Route 66 through Flagstaff. He died two years before the road got its number.

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Motel DuBeau and The Green Book

Built in 1929 by French-Canadian Albert DuBeau, the Motel DuBeau was considered luxurious for its time: indoor toilets, carpeting, steam-heated garage parking. It was also listed in The Negro Motorist's Green Book, the guidebook that told African Americans where they could safely eat, sleep, and get gas on Route 66.

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Mike's Pike / Mars Hill / Percival Lowell

Percival Lowell was a Harvard-educated Boston blue-blood who came to Flagstaff in 1894 because he was convinced there was life on Mars. He was wrong about the Martians. But his observatory was the real deal, and his influence helped win the routing fight that brought Highway 66 through Flagstaff instead of Phoenix.

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Mother Road Brewing

Mother Road Brewing sits in the Milum Building, built in 1925 as a steam laundry that served the motels, boarding houses, and businesses along Route 66. The laundry also handled linens for the sawmill and the hospital. More than once, amputated limbs were found in the sheets. There are ghost stories here.

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B&M Auto Camp

Before the auto camp, travel was for the wealthy. You stayed at hotels, you took the train. Auto camps changed everything. A working family could load up the car, throw a tent in the back, and go. The B&M Auto Camp sat right on the 1926 alignment of Route 66, and it made the freedom of the open road available to everyone.

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Red Light District

In the 1880s, Flagstaff was as lawless and wild as Tombstone, and most of the carousing took place right on the Southside. As the lumber mill prospered and families arrived, the battle between the saloon owners and the church-goers raged for nearly a decade. It took a young mayor from Iowa to broker the peace.

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Tourist Home and The Basque Shepherds

The Tourist Home was built in 1926 as a boarding house for Basque sheepherders and male travelers. Its handball court is one of the few remaining in the Southwest. The Basque people were just one part of the Southside's transformation from red light district to working neighborhood.

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The Downtowner and Dutch May

Inside this large city block at 19 South San Francisco Street, several buildings tell the story of Flagstaff's Southside. Around 1900, this was brothel-rich territory. It was here, in August 1916, that the well-known madam Dutch May Peters Prescott and her companion were found dead in a scene that no one believed was a murder-suicide. The crime was never solved.

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Mother Myth Mural and The Pow Wow

The Mother Myth of Route 66 Mural, painted in 2013 by the Mural Mice artists, tells the story of the Mother Road decade by decade. But the real story at this stop is the Flagstaff All-Indian Pow Wow, which ran for fifty years on Route 66 and drew over 100,000 people at its peak. Native Americans celebrated their cultural freedom under the cover of America's Independence Day.

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Walk These Landmarks With a Guide

The Route 66 Walking Tour of Flagstaff covers all 16 landmarks in 90 minutes. A trained storyteller walks you through 100 years of history you will not find in any guidebook.

Walk all 16 stops with a guide, see the full tour route

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