A few days ago, Nick Gerlich and KC Keefer revealed a trailer for “Painted Desert Trading Post,” a short documentary about the long-abandoned property in eastern Arizona near the Petrified Forest National Park.
The trailer is long on atmosphere, which I like a lot.
Gerlich, a professor of marketing at West Texas A&M University, has been exploring old and obscure alignments of Route 66 for several years and wrote the script. KC Keefer, producer of the Genuine Route 66 Life video series, is the director and producer.
Gerlich says the film will be released in early 2015.
Part of the property’s allure is sits on an very rough and often-closed road. Its inaccessibility largely protects it from vandals and souvenir-hunters. Its very desolation adds to the landscape and vibe surrounding it. And, in their own way, Gerlich and Keefer finding the history of the Painted Desert Trading Post is its own form of preservation.
(Image from the Painted Desert Trading Post in 2009 by Jay Gannett via Flickr)