Route 66: The Mountain Grade Cars Climbed in Reverse

FURTHER READING As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. EZ66 Guide For Travelers, 6th Edition (Jerry McClanahan) https://amzn.to/3U9jbfI Here It Is! The Route 66 Map Series (Jim Ross & Jerry McClanahan) https://amzn.to/4xnAOqQ On a mountain road in western Arizona, there is a stretch of pavement where drivers used to stop at the bottom, turn their cars around, and drive up the mountain backwards. Not as a stunt. Not as a dare. As the only way to get to the top. Whole families, luggage strapped to the roof, reversing up a grade of switchbacks and blind corners with a thousand foot drop off the edge, watching the road come at them through the rear window. And the ones who would not do it had two options. Pay a local man to drive the car up for them, or hire a team of horses to drag it. This was not a back road. Between nineteen twenty six and nineteen fifty two, this was Route 66. LOCATIONS FROM THIS VIDEO: Sitgreaves Pass summit (3,550 ft) — pull-off with viewpoint, foundations of the Summit station: 35.0296, -114.3505 Cool Springs Station (rebuilt, original stone pillars), Oatman Highway east of the pass: 35.0455, -114.2664 Goldroad ghost town ruins and mine workings: on the Oatman Highway between the pass and Oatman Oatman, Arizona — main street, wild burros, Durlin Hotel: 35.0261, -114.3833 Historic Route 66 (Oatman Highway) — drivable from Kingman to Oatman, approx. 15 miles over the pass Yucca, Arizona — the 1952 bypass alignment, now an I-40 exit: 34.8681, -114.1450