Holbrook Arizona on Route 66


 Holbrook, AZ really benefited from Route 66, the town has a lot of motels, or, at least it did.  With the coming of the interstate, Holbrook was hit hard.  Now, many of those motels have been converted to apartments. The town soldiers on though, a bit bloodied and worse for the wear.

 Holbrook is known as one of the few places where Route 66 took a 90 turn. It suggests that it is the last remaining one. That corner is the intersection of Navajo Blvd and Hopi Drive.  Also on the corner is Gillespie Park with this stone, with a painted Route 66 shield, along with a statue of a pony express rider on a  horse, and a windmill.


 Rainbow Rock shop technically isn't on Route 66, but it is close.  The big thing here are the dinosaur statues, but I'm not sure how true-to-life they are. It also has geodes and piles of petrified wood.

This is the old Navajo County Courthouse.  It is currently used as a museum and visitor center, and has a nice plaza in front.

Did you ever want to sleep in a wigwam?  This historic motel advertises that all its units look like wigwams. The entire motel has been revitalized and each unit has an old car out front.

The main building for the Wigwam Motel and the motel sign.  Lots of old cars abound.

Google tells me the Globtrotter Lodge is permanently closed.  The Globetrotter Lodge is the former Sun-n-Sand motel, and before that it was the first Whiting Brothers Hotel.

I think this is the most unusual VW bus I have ever seen, that along makes it worth posting.  Also, nice old yellow bug, and, in the window you can see a sign saying that Jack Rabbit Trading Post is 15 miles away. This shop is in a former gas station.

Here's a peeling old billboard for the Butterfield Stage Co. Steak House. The building it is on is also pretty cool and unique, and looks abandoned. Across the street in the distance you can see some of the dinosaurs at Rainbow Rock Shop.

This is the former Sundown Motel and Coffee shop. This is just the motel portion and it is well maintained. It looks like apartments instead of a hotel now.

This is the former Sundown Motel and Coffee shop. This is just the coffee shop portion. It is now vacant, but has really need  angled windows and doors (as well as an odd roofline.

This is The Plainsman restaurant. It has been closed for a while, but it used to have a really cool sign. Unfortunately the sign is now gone. 

Copyright 2019, user Marine 69-71 on Wikimedia Commons. CC-SA 3.0

Here's a photo of the sign for the Plainsman restaurant as of 2019.

Junior

 Usually I avoid getting people in my photos, not everyone is comfortable with it and I don't want to have to deal with someone being upset with me.  However, sometimes people want to be in the picture.  Junior here was one of them. He and his friend Jason were walking down the street and stopped to talk for a few minutes. Behind him is the abandoned Star Inn. This was originally called the Desert View Motel.

This is as far east as I made it on this trip down Route 66. I'll have more posts later from other trips on other parts of historic Route 66. 

Prior stop: Geronimo Trading Post on Route 66. You can see all my Route 66 posts here. 

 

 

 

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