Mohave County, Arizona
Transportation
.  Arizona Stage Company |
| Transportation is vital to any community. Without some means of getting people and goods from here to there, most communities cannot survive. Kingman owes its existence to transportation. Transportation in this area began in the late 1850s with a came train. Lt. Edward F. Beale left New Mexico with 25 camels, an experiment by the U.S. Army to survey and build the first wagon road through Arizona. Settlers and miners with horses, oxen and wagons soon followed in his footsteps. In 1867, surveyors from the Kansas Pacific Railroad Expedition following the 35th parallel were in search of the best route west for the newest mode of transportation, the train. The U.S. government wanted the West to grow, and in 1866 Congress chartered the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad to build a rail and telegraph line from the states of Missouri and Arkansas to the Pacific Coast. In return, the railroad was granted ownership of 20 alternating sections of public property along the line per mile. The land was designated by odd numbers in survey books, and its legacy can still be seen in the checkerboard pattern of public and private land seen on Arizona maps today. From the beginning, the Atlantic and Pacific , struggled. It wasn't until the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad acquired half of the ownership shares that things got rolling, but work on the rail was quickly halted again by another roadblock. It seems the Atlantic and Pacific wasn't the only railroad granted a charier by Congress in the area. The Southern Pacific Railroad's charter gave it control over any and all crossing points along the Colorado River. This meant that the Atlantic and Pacific had to make a deal with Southern Pacific in order to complete the rail. After several years, a deal was struck, and in April of 1880, the Atlantic and Pacific sent Lewis Kingman to survey the route from New Mexico to the Colorado River. According to an undated manuscript housed at the Mohave Museum of History and Arts, Kingman reached Beale Springs on May 10. He then sent his men to Fort Mojave while he and his partner made a trip to Railroad Springs near the present day site of Kingman. The two followed the Sacramento Wash to the Colorado River, and using teams of men, built the railroad backwards from the Colorado River to Kingman and Chloride There years later, on March 27, the rails reached Kingman. One day later, the first train arrived. By October 1883, full service on the line started. Like many small towns out West, the railroad made Kingman. The city's close location to the many mineral mines in the area made it a key stop in the county. By 1920, Kingman's single rail line couldn't keep up with the traffic. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe started a second line in the area around 1922. By 1929, the second line was sending trains through Kingman. The railroad even contributed to the building of the Kingman Hospital, which still stands on Beale Street. At nearly the same time, the federal government started work on Route 66. Crews began the famous east/west roadway in Chicago in 1926. At the lime, it was the only interstate highway to run diagonally south across the U.S. The unpaved route was completed quickly. A best guess from records at the museum put the route in Kingman around 1927. Soon, flight became the rage in the U.S. Charles Lindbergh and other investors formed Transcontinental Air Transport in 1928, one of the first New York to Los Angeles services available. Businessmen and wealthy travelers would be able to cross the country in two days by taking alternating trips in trains and airplanes. After several trips to the area, Lindbergh, famous for piloting the "Spirit of St. Louis" across the Atlantic in 1927, decided to make Kingman a stop on the route. Work started on the Airport in Kingman on February 1929. The airport was located in the area between Airway Avenue and Bank Street, where the Mohave County Fairgrounds are now. The area encompassed 310 acres and had two runways. The businesses of Kingman closed on June 25, 1929, to celebrate the dedication of the new field. Competing for passengers and cargo with TAT was Western Air Express the Company built its own field near the Santa Fe Railroad tracks and opened for business on May 3,1929 It offered trips from Kansas City to Los Angeles twice a day. It wasn't long before a price war erupted between the two air services. The end of the 1930s brought about a change to Kingman Planes had become more fuel efficient, and the stop in Kingman was no longer needed instead, people flooded Route 66 in an effort to escape the Great Depression The original Route 66 wound through a number of treacherous hairpin turns on its way to Oatman. That section of the route soon became known as "Bloody 66" for the number of accidents that occurred along its scenic curves. By 1951, an alternate route through Yucca was constructed. In the early 1940s, air travel in Kingman picked back up with the start of World War II. The U.S. Army took over Western Air Express airfield and turned it into a gunnery school for its bomber crews. After World War II, families on the great American vacation to see the West cruised along Route 66, stopping at the various roadside attractions. In 1957, the federal government started a new road project, the National Interstate Highway System. Interstate 40 would replace Route 66 and bypass a number of small cities like Kingman that depended on the old highway. Kingman pioneers like Arthur F. Black fought vehemently to get 1-40 routed through Kingman, knowing that the interstate would be vital for the city's future. During Route 66s heydays, the railroads saw ridership drop. They simply couldn't compete with the new highways. By the early 1970s, most railroads, including the Santa Fe, abandoned their passenger lines to Amtrak, a rail line subsidized by the federal government. The last section of 1-40 was completed in 1984. In 1985, the government decommissioned Route 66, and it would take the efforts of Angel Delgadillo of Seligman and Jerry Richard and David Wesson of Kingman to keep the highway relevant in a changed America. Today air, rail and auto transport in Kingman still thrives. The Kingman Airport and Industrial Park has become a center for jobs and shipping in the area. Several trains a day pass through Kingman delivering goods from the West Coast to the East Coast. Even Route 66 is alive today thanks in most part to the release of "Cars" in 2006. With the completion of a new highway near the Hoover Dam expected in 2010, Kingman will once again be at the center of transportation in the West. |
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