Becker's Transcontinental Garage

The automobile reached Round Valley the same year the country was first crossed by car. In 1910, as A. L. Westgard made a pathfinding coast-to-coast drive, the Becker family — Springerville's pioneer merchants and tireless road boosters — opened its first garage here, in a sandstone-fronted adobe building. Edward Becker took a Ford franchise in 1914 to sell Model Ts, launching what the town calls the oldest continuously operated Ford dealership west of the Mississippi. Renamed the Transcontinental Garage in 1915, it marked Springerville's place on the emerging ocean-to-ocean auto route across the West.

What the plaque says

Becker's Transcontinental Garage. The oldest continuously operated Ford dealership west of the Mississippi began in the west building in 1910. A pathfinding auto trip blazed the first "ocean to ocean highway" through here.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Casa Malpais — steps away
  The Mogollon great house on the lava, and the catacombs sealed back shut
• Mount Baldy — 22 mi
  Dzil Ligai Si'an, the sacred White Mountain, and the summit you stop short of

More markers nearby

• Madonna of the Trail — steps away
• Baca Home — steps away
• Arizona Cooperative Mercantile Institution — steps away
• El Rio Theatre — steps away