Water Tanks

Around 1910 the Santa Fe raised these black steel tanks to water the bigger steam engines it was putting on the line, and they became a fixture of Kingman's skyline. When the railroad dieselized in the 1950s it handed them to the city, which used them for fire-department storage and painted one silver with the boast 1,000 Miles of Shoreline, a nod to Mohave County's frontage on the dammed Colorado. By 1986 the rusting, leaking tanks had become a liability, but they still read as a marker of the water-stop town Kingman was.

What the plaque says

In about 1910 these water tanks, painted black, were installed to accommodate new larger steam engines as part of an Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad infrastructure upgrade. They became a dominate feature of the city's skyline., By 1953, the railroad had updated almost its entire fleet and ownership of these tanks was transferred to the City of Kingman for use as storage for the fire department. The tank facing east on Route 66 was painted silver, and a notation promoting 1,000 Miles of Shoreline, a reference to Mohave County's Colorado River frontage, was added., By 1986, the rusty and leaking tanks were listed as a liability.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kingman — steps away
  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 — 22 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

• Depot Plaza — steps away
• Depot — steps away
• Miner's Mineral Monument — steps away
• Central Commercial — steps away