Awesome Arizona - How to Kill a Town

For sixty years, anyone driving from the middle of the United States to the Southwest or West Coast took this Main Street of America.  Oklahomans fleeing the Dustbowl, Jack Kerouc and the Beat Generation, vacationers intent on seeing the Grand Canyon all traveled on this most famous road in America, one of the original highways the government established in 1927.

When travelers got hungry they stopped for a bite in one of the town diners sprinkled along the route; when they couldn't drive another mile, they stopped for the night at Earl's Motor Court or the Hill Top Motel.  Route 66, the highway John Steinbeck called the Mother Road in The Grapes of Wrath, passed right through the middle of towns across America and helped them prosper.

Winslow, Arizona, was one of them.

The famous corner in Winslow.

The Mother Road, so famous it spawned a TV series called, appropriately enough, Route 66, went right through the heart of Winslow.  Then Jackson Browne and Glenn Frey wrote a song called "Take It Easy," popularized by the Eagles in 1972, and Winslow became not just a place to pass through but a destination.

Well, I'm a standing on a corner
in Winslow, Arizona
and such a fine sight to see
It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed
Ford slowin' down to take a look at me
Come on, baby, don't say maybe
I gotta know if your sweet love is
gonna save me
We may lose and we may win though
we will never be here again
so open up, I'm climbin' in

so take it easy