The California Historic Route 66 Association will hold a Route 66 Byway celebration from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Feb. 12 at the historic El Garces in Needles, California.
Attendees include Atlanta, Illinois, tourism director Whitney Ortiz as well as authors and photographers. Area car clubs are planning to attend, and free tours of El Garces will be offered.
Earlier this year, about 150 miles of Route 66 from Needles to Barstow, California, was officially announced as a National Scenic Byway by the Federal Highway Administration.
Route 66 in that Mojave Desert stretch of Southern California was one of 34 new byways, the first additions to the program since 2009.
The California association in the spring of 2020 had requested letters of support for the byways nomination.
Over 300 miles of Missouri’s Route 66 also attained All-American Road status at that time, which means it contains features that do not exist elsewhere in the United States and is unique and important enough to be a tourist destination unto itself.
Route 66 community partners are invited to reserve an information table at El Garces for their group. Call 760-326-4007 to reserve a table.
The Needles Chamber of Commerce in August broke ground to build a new office and visitors center in El Garces.
El Garces was built in 1908 as a Harvey House to greet and feed customers who stepped off the train there. El Garces closed in 1949. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.
Allen Affeldt, the savior of other Harvey Houses in Winslow, Arizona, and Las Vegas, New Mexico, sought to also restore El Garces as a hotel and restaurant starting in 2007 but dropped the plan two years later after the Federal Transit Administration wouldn’t allow the city to deed the property to him.
After more work, El Garces reopened to the public in 2014. El Garces sits one block off Broadway (aka Route 66).
Sponsors of the byway celebration event are Friends of the El Garces, Needles Regional Museum and Needles Tourist and Visitors Center.
(Image of the restored El Garces in Needles, California)
How serendipitous! I had just finished reading the following article which begins with reference to “a Mojave woman and her ailing teenage brother [stepping] off” an AT&SF passenger train at “the El Garces Depot in Needles, California” (p. 511). The article details public health issues compounded by the interaction of Indigenous Mojaves and immigrants traveling to Arizona (and the areas surrounding the Colorado River Indian Agency) for health reasons, most of the latter suffering from TB. The time frame covered in the article centers primarily on the first two decades of the 20th century (before the establishment of Rt. 66). However, the immigration for health seekers continued well past those first two decades.
Larkin-Gilmore, Juliet. “On the Borders: Towns, Mobility, and Public Health in Mojave History.” The Journal if Arizona History, 61(3&4), pp. 511-534.