The long-abandoned Route 66 portion of the Petrified Forest National Park in eastern Arizona was recently added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Petrified Forest National Park Route 66 Archaeological District was officially listed on Feb. 27, according to an email from the National Park Service.
Bill Collins, National Register of Historic Places program coordinator for the Arizona State Historic Preservation Office, stated in an email that the nomination was a project of the Park Service and the Petrified Forest National Park unit. The author of the documentation was David E. Purcell of the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff.
Collins said his office concurred that the district qualified for the National Register in June 2025, “but had heard nothing further of its submission to the National Register office in Washington until we received the listing notification” in recent days.
Here’s what the 87-page National Register nomination form said of the park’s Route 66 Archaeological District:
The Petrified Forest National Park (PEFO) Route 66 Archaeological District consists of the portion of the National Old Trails Highway (NOTH) within the current park boundaries that was designated U.S. Highway 66 in 1926, a later paved alignment of Route 66, an abandoned section of the Painted Desert Rim Road, two roadside commercial properties, two National Park Service (NPS) tourist checking stations, and a roadside campsite.
Although Route 66 within PEFO was partially stripped of pavement in 1961 and is currently heavily overgrown by vegetation, Route 66 and the Painted Desert Rim Road still convey their use as automobile highways. The associated commercial and NPS buildings were razed by the National Park Service and others. Route 66 and the associated structures and sites retain archaeological deposits and features that provided important information about motorist behavior and material culture in PEFO during the period 1922 to 1960 (Purcell 2025) and can provide further insights to future researchers.
The form also stated that over 11,000 artifacts of glass, metal, rubber, plastic, wood and stone were tallied, described and mapped with handheld GPS units in six segments of shorter sections of each alignment of Route 66.
The nomination also contains information about the long-defunct Painted Desert Park (aka Lion Farm), Painted Desert Tower and a Route 66 Checking Station.
The park marks where Route 66 crossed many years ago. Though the roadbed is long gone, you can discern a slight ground elevation where it once was, plus a string of telephone poles that go off into the distance.
In case you’re wondering, the restored Painted Desert Trading Post is not part of the National Register designation. It lies east of the park.
(Image of the Painted Desert Tower in 1957 by the National Park Service)