Wagon Route

The road came before the rails and the highway both. In 1857 and 1858 Lieutenant Edward Beale surveyed a wagon road across northern Arizona along the 35th parallel, famously testing U.S. Army camels as pack animals on the route. Railroad surveyors followed, the Atlantic and Pacific laid track through here in 1882 and 1883, and Kingman got its rails in the spring of 1883. When Route 66 was drawn a half-century later, it closely followed the line Beale had scouted. Every traveler through Kingman still uses his survey.

What the plaque says

Surveyed by Lt. Edward F. Beale 1857 - 1858. Followed by railroad survey, 1858 – 1859. Route of Atlantic and Pacific Railroad built across Arizona 1882 – 1883. Tracks reached Kingman, spring, 1883. U. S. Highway 66 closely follows Beale's survey.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kingman — 0.4 mi
  The working hub of Route 66 in Arizona — a railroad town named for a surveyor, Andy Devine's hometown, and the last real stop before the road's two wildest endings.
• Oatman — 21 mi
  A gold camp in the Black Mountains that outlived its mines, now run by wild burros — reached by the wildest switchbacks left on Route 66, and named for a history worth telling straight.
• Hackberry General Store — 23 mi
  Looks like a junkyard, is a shrine — the 1934 store an artist brought back from the dead, and the Route 66 stop that inspired Fillmore in Cars.

More markers nearby

• Charles Metcalfe Park — steps away
• Wish You Were Here — steps away
• Powerhouse — steps away
• Santa Fe Locomotive No. 3759 — steps away