The so-called Main Street of America carves through the very heart of Peach Springs, Arizona. As do rattling BNSF freight trains on similar cross-country road trips — only by rail — from Chicago to Los Angeles.
Up to 80 blaring locomotives barrel through here every day.
Home to roughly 1,200 residents, this tiny town measures less than 8 square miles in size between Seligman and Kingman. Peach Springs is also the capital of the roughly 2,400-member Hualapai Tribe — and where a concrete service station painted mostly ghost white with hints of crimson red and mustard yellow has endured for close to a century in Arizona's high desert.
This single-story building looks seemingly abandoned — with boarded up windows and padlocked garage doors. But the tribe with its partners have pumped lots of time and money in hopes of breathing new life into the old Osterman Gas Station.
Historical preservation isn't something Kevin Davidson, who heads the Planning and Economic Development Department for the Hualapai Tribe, was expecting to tackle in his role as director. But this work has admittedly transformed into one of his many passion projects.
"So here's the interior," said Davidson as he unlocked the Osterman. "You see some storage material, an old forklift from the 1960s — probably from when the gas station was operational. Anything that looks white and light is new. The older, darker — from about 95 years ago — is the original material."
Swedish immigrant John Osterman opened his namesake service station in 1929.
Ownership occasionally changed hands over its seven decades of operation — before being deeded to the Hualapai Tribe. In 2012, the Osterman was officially added to the National Register of Historic Places. This iconic 3,200-square-feet landmark butts up against the curb of the Mother Road.
Several years ago, a devastating microburst sheared off its roof. "You walked in here after the microburst, there was skylight — birds flying, flying, flying through," Davidson recalled, adding that the roof "peeled off like a sardine tin can."
Some Hualapais wondered whether it was even worth saving the old Shell stop. But not Charles Vaughn. "I wish it could've been restored, and I wish it was still operating as a gas station," he said.
That's because the 73-year-old Hualapai elder and former tribal chairman was actually in charge of the Osterman as a teen. He remembers when the historic pit stop drew hundreds of vehicles to Peach Springs each day.
"I was busy, pumped gas. I washed windshields, did oil changes, that sort of thing," added Vaughn. "It had the only phone in town. There was a telephone booth inside the garage — old fashioned with bifold doors. People would be lined up to use it."
As part of his daily duties, Vaughn also had to literally beat the busy Route 66 traffic, explaining "if you crossed from where the store is, you had to run across." To this day, there's no marked crosswalk in Peach Springs. Only now, nobody needs to sprint across the commercial highway.
"Once I-40 was built, we became a ghost town," said Hualapai elder Wynona Tapija-Sinyella, 71, reflecting on when the tribe briefly benefited from tourists getting their kicks on Route 66 in its heyday before her whole town was bypassed. "Everything just kind of crumbled, and everything started closing."
Not long after the 2021 microburst, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the Osterman among the 11 most endangered landmarks in the U.S. The nonprofit has injected nearly $170,000 in preservation grants to rebuild.
"I went out and interviewed some folks in Peach Springs during the construction process. And I talked to a resident there," said Rhys Martin, the nonprofit's Route 66 manager. "And she said, 'When I would come over the hill, I would see the light of the Shell station and that meant I was home.'"
That rosy picture of Route 66 is complicated by a legacy of cultural appropriation — with tepees, bow and arrows and totem poles dotting the way. It's something Martin is all too familiar with living in Tulsa.
Route 66 also touches 14 tribes in Oklahoma, including the Cherokee Nation. Officially commissioned 100 years ago on Wednesday, more than half of the 2,448-mile-long thoroughfare traverses Indian Country.
"Because when you think of Route 66, you generally think of a white family heading west to California on vacation," added Martin. "Route 66 is bringing all these people in from all over the world, and it's now an opportunity for tribes of today to be able to tell their authentic story."
Hualapai Chairman Duane Clarke wishes he could travel back in time.
"I would've loved to been here when that first car went through," Clarke said. "There was probably a lot of unknowns for our community members as the West continued to move forward. And you look at the pictures of yesterday, and you see everybody coming together."
"That's what America was about, and that's what America is about tomorrow."
Right now, his tribe is working with the Arizona Department of Transportation to design a visitor center inside the Osterman Gas Station. And if all goes according to plan, the new rest stop should be ready for weary travelers cruising through the Grand Canyon State by December 2027.
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