Skip to main content

Route 66 Wednesday; Hackberry General Store

Approximately 27 miles east of downtown Kingman on Arizona State Route 66 along a former portion of US Route 66 is the Hackberry General Store.


Hackberry dates back to the 1870s as a mining town settled around the Hackberry Silver Mine.  The town of Hackberry was named after a tree of the same name which grew in a nearby creek.  Hackberry much like many of the western towns that were on US Route 66 was along the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad.  Hackberry can be seen on the A&P Railroad map of Arizona in 1882.

1882 A&P Railroad Map of western Arizona

By the late 1910s, the mines in Hackberry closed down which almost led to the demise of the town.  By 1926 US Route 66 had been routed through Arizona along the previous Auto-Trail known as the National Old Trails Road which gave Hackberry a second life servicing cross-country travelers. Hackberry can be seen displayed on the 1927 State Highway Map of Arizona.

1927 Arizona State Highway Map

In 1934 what is now known as the Hackberry General Store opened as Northside Grocery which had a Conoco Station.  The Hackberry General Store remained in operation servicing travelers on US Route 66 until 1978 when I-40 bypassed US Route 66.  Hackberry along with much of the towns on AZ 66 almost died out and diminished in importance until renewed interest in tourism associated with US Route 66 started to grow in the 1990s.  The Hackberry Store reopened in 1992 and has been in operation ever since.  Today the pumps no longer work but rather usually host a parking spot for a C1 Corvette.


The Hackberry General Store sells all the standard tourist trinkets inside the building coupled with some haggard older items.  Usually, I stopped in for a Route 66 Root Beer when they were a lot more common to find around 2012.  The interior of the Hackberry General Store has a really nice old US 66 shield from California of all places.


The real fun at the Hackberry General Store is exploring the grounds to check out signs, gas pumps, and old cars.  There is plenty to see around the store and there always to be something new whenever I stop in.
















There are even some old Burma Shave ads that are next to some of the cars.


And even an old water tower displaying the name of the community of Hackberry.



Site Navigation:

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ghost Town Tuesday; Mannfield, FL and the stairway to Hell

Back in 2015 I went searching the Lecanto Sand Hills for the original Citrus County Seat known as Mannfield.  Unlike Centrailia in Hernando County and Fivay in Pasco County I did find something worth seeing. Mannfield is located in the Lecanto Sand Hill section of Withlacoochee State Forest somewhat east of the intersection of Citrus County Route 491 and Mansfield Road. Mannfield was named after Austin Mann and founded in Hernando County in 1884 before Citrus County Split away.  In 1887 Citrus County was split from northern Hernando County while Pasco County was spun off to the south.  Mannfield was selected as the new Citrus County seat due to it being near the county geographic center.  Reportedly Mannfield had as many as 250 people when it was the County Seat.  The town included various businesses one might include at the time, even a sawmill which was common for the area.  In 1891 Citrus County voted to move it's seat to Inverness which set the s...

Interstate 40's Tumultuous Ride Through the Pigeon River Gorge

In the nearly 60 years Interstate 40 has been open to traffic through the Pigeon River Gorge in the mountains of Western North Carolina, it has been troubled by frequent rockslides and damaging flooding, which has seen the over 30-mile stretch through North Carolina and Tennessee closed for months at a time. Most recently, excessive rainfall from Hurricane Helene in September 2024 saw sections of Interstate 40 wash away into a raging Pigeon River. While the physical troubles of Interstate 40 are well known, how I-40 came to be through the area is a tale of its own. Interstate 40 West through Haywood County near mile marker 10. I-40's route through the Pigeon River Gorge dates to local political squabbles in the 1940s and a state highway law written in 1921. A small note appeared in the July 28, 1945, Asheville Times. It read that the North Carolina State Highway Commission had authorized a feasibility study of a "...water-level road down [the] Pigeon River to the Tennessee l...

The mystery of Hawaii Route 144 and temporary Hawaii Route 11

The 1959 Gousha Road map of Hawaii features two largely unknown references in the form of Hawaii Route 144 and Temporary Hawaii Route 11.  Both corridors are shown running from the boundary of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park east to Glenwood via Volcano Village.  At the time Hawaii Route 11 was using the so-called "Volcano Road" which was constructed as a modernization of Mamalahoa Highway during 1927-1928.  This blog will examine the two map references and will attempt to determine what they might indicate.  The mystery of Hawaii Route 144 and Temporary Hawaii Route 11 Hawaii Route 11 is part of Mamalahoa Highway (the Hawaii Belt Road) and is the longest Hawaiian State Route at 121.97 miles.  The highway begins at the mutual junction of Hawaii Route 19 and Hawaii Route 190 in Kailua-Kona.  From Kailua-Kona the routing of Hawaii Route 11 crosses the volcanic landscapes of southern side of the Big Island.  Hawaii Route 11 terminates at Hawaii Route 19/Ka...