Route 66: The Arizona Sidewinder, wild burros and a living statue
KINGMAN, Arizona — There is a roughly 8-mile section of Route 66 at the western edge of this state that is considered to be one of the most scenic and white-knuckled drives this country has to offer.
It's known as the Arizona Sidewinder, or to locals, simply, The Sidewinder.
Eastbound Route 66 leaves California and crosses the Colorado River into Arizona, where it unfurls like a ribbon of pavement approaching the Black Mountains. A Mojave County worker in a small plow truck cleaned debris from the previous night's storm as the two-lane road ascended 2,700 feet to Oatman.
Local lore says the town was named in honor of Olive Oatman, an Illinois woman whose family was killed by a Native American tribe in the area and who, the story goes, was eventually adopted and raised by a different tribe.
Gold brought the miners who eventually created Oatman, and those miners brought burros to haul rock, water and supplies. When the mines closed, the animals were released into the wild.
Several decades later, they've become a popular attraction in town. Shops sell approved pellets and warn visitors against feeding them carrots. On the outskirts, they can bring traffic to a standstill by congregating in the roadway and approaching the open windows of tourists hoping for a photo.
People meandered down Oatman's main drag lined with shops selling T-shirts, Arizona honey and 'real American turquoise.' At the center of the road, a group of maybe 50 converged to watch two men recreate a gunfight between 'Outlaw Willie' and 'Patton.' The outlaw lost — his second defeat of the day (the first being when his wireless microphone kept cutting out).
Willie (real name Rod Hall, 80) and Patton (Chris Marshman, 70) live in nearby Fort Mojave and have been performing for visitors for 31 years and 25 years, respectively. The gunfight, they say, raises money for Shriners International.
Exiting Oatman, Route 66 morphs into The Sidewinder. This serpentine portion of the road is reported to contain nearly 200 curves, many of them perched precariously on cliff edges absent guardrails. Travelers are warned not to attempt to navigate them in vehicles longer than 40 feet.
As the road climbed to Sitgreaves Pass, elevation 3,586 feet, the views from a scenic overlook were made more profound by the discovery of a make-shift cemetery with dozens of memorials to deceased loved ones whose cremations were scattered at the site.
Ginny died at the age of 95. Jeremy at 14.
About 25 miles east of Sitgreaves sits the city of Kingman, population 35,000. Outside the city's railroad museum along its vibrant Route 66 corridor is a bronze statue to Jim Hinckley, an author, historian, tour guide, podcaster, consultant and raconteur.
'I wish they would have waited until I was dead,' joked Hinckley, 68, his face flushed with embarrassment under his wide-brimed cowboy hat. 'It's like attending my own funeral every time I come down here.'
Born on the North Carolina coast, Hinckley said his dad, a Navy and Coast Guard veteran, moved the family outside Kingman after throwing a dart at a paper map he folded to ensure it would land nowhere near water.
A professional path as winding as The Sidewinder — he's been a rancher, a miner, a rodeo cowboy, a repo man, a truck driver and a mechanic — led him to writing, first about American automobile history and then Route 66.
Hinckley helped curate a self-guided walking tour of the city's historic district and provides audio narrations of the sites via a QR code on plaques. One tells the story of a former rodeo grounds on the route where, before the road was designated Route 66, the Chicago Cubs played two exhibition games: One in 1917 against a local team and the second in 1924 against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
'Pretty much everything in my life is tied to this road,' he said. 'I learned to ride a bicycle, learned to drive on this. My early ranch work was on this road. Courting my wife was tied to this road. It's the American experience made manifest. For me, it's just the evolution of myself as well as this country.'
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