Abandoned America: Twin Arrows Restoration

On Interstate 40 in Arizona, between Winslow and Flagstaff, you'll find Twin Arrows, an iconic Route 66 trading post that has been abandoned since 1998 and is deteriorating quickly. The best-known feature of Twin Arrows are the arrows themselves – made from telephone poles, sticking into the ground at an angle. Nature took its toll on the arrows, and they were falling apart the last time I was at the site.

Route 66 enthusiasts found this sad, and it turns out we weren't the only ones. The Hopi tribe owns the buildings, and now intends to restore and re-open the trading post. And restoring the iconic arrows came first: earlier this month, volunteers cleaned up the site and restored and repainted the arrows.

As a followup, the Hopi intend to bring the trading post back into operation, possibly by next summer. Not coincidentally, the Navajo tribe is planning to open a $200 million casino-hotel across the highway from the site.

I'm not sure how I feel about the casino. This site could best be described as “way out in the desert” or “the middle of nowhere.” Sure, there's an Interstate highway, but aside from that, there's nothing around. Won't a huge casino sort of ruin the ambience?

On the other hand, if that's what attracted enough attention to the site to convince someone to rescue it from the desert, a site I was pretty resigned to losing forever, that might be a good enough trade-off.

Read all about it at the Arizona Daily Sun. A picture of the newly-restored arrows awaits you.

The arrows in May of 2008