Wednesday 18th April

Seligman, Arizona is one of the smallest places we visited with the entire town, for lack of a better description, comprising of one main road and a population of just over 450 people according to the 2000 census.With approximately 10 persons per square mile and a history of land use which means there are no villages only a few ranches, the surrounding areas are mostly empty or dispersed as a result of the railroads and makes Seligman an accurate representation of what rural America is. White, older ages, republican, conservative.  What was most interesting about this old Route 66 town was the history it was portraying, it had to invent itself in order to survive after Interstate 40 bypassed it. As a result Seligman is selling a false history of the fifties not the thirties as it historically should and has managed to prevent itself becoming a ghost town thanks to the support of the community and people like barber and resident, Angel Delgadillo who helped established the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona Continuing down Route 66 and the road of reinvention, we visited the old historic gold mining town of Oatman which shared a common element of interest with Seligman, motorbikes. I got the impression that today the motorbike, in particular the Harley-Davidson, is a symbol of Route 66, the open roads of the West and ultimately the freedom that is associated with America. It was therefore not surprising that all of the gift shops in these small towns were using that as a key selling point as well as attracting bikers travelling the length of America’s mother road. Bikers can be seen as a modern day representation of the cowboy which is seen through the appearance of Oatman as a town that looks as though it has stepped out of a John Wayne western mixed with signs promoting motorbiking and old memoribilia. Oatman has another more unique and somewhat irritating aspect which helps keep it alive, when the miners vacated the area in the late 1800's they left behind the burros they used in the mines, the descendents of whom roam the town freely today although whether they can really be called “wild” burros is a matter of opinion.

‘The Road Wanderer: Seligman, Az. Route 66 Town’. http://www.theroadwanderer.net/RT66seligman.htm.