A Grand Old Place

La Posada Hotel was the last and most elegant of the Fred Harvey Hotels built by the Santa Fe Railroad. Built between 1927 and 1930, it is a must stop when you visit Winslow, Arizona. It was closed in 1959 and converted into offices. In 1997, to prevent the hotel from being torn down, it was purchased and restored to its former grandeur.

The grounds are really nice.











They even have a hay bale maze. We wondered if that was for visiting children.

There is a fabulous gift shop with many fine native craft items located off the lobby.

Look at the chandelier in the shop.

This hallway with iron doors is very interesting.

The hotel interior is decorated with many beautiful works of art. Here is a short movie of some of them.



We think this would be a great place for a short get-away sometime next fall or spring. We love old hotels.

The Power of Advertising

You have probably heard of Wall Drug in South Dakota. Why? Because there are signs all along I-90 as you approach Wall, announcing free ice water if you stop at Wall Drug. Today, Wall is a major destination for travelers. Almost the same thing can be said for Winslow, AZ. Why do we know about it? Most of us have heard, and can repeat, at least a couple of lines from the song, Take It Easy. "Standin on the Corner in Winslow, Arizona, watching all the girls go by." That may be the only song I know from the Eagles (I'm not much of a pop music person), but even I know that line. And each year thousands of people have their picture taken at Standin on the Corner Park. Even John.

The corner is on famous Route 66.

Winslow is a fun town to visit and we have spent five days at nearby Homolovi Ruins State Park. The town has a number of murals.

There was a cute statue? decoration? in front of the store across the street from the corner.

The Winslow High School mascot is the bulldog. One corner on the road out of town has this great statue.

And we really enjoyed the sign in a cafe window, especially since we will celebrate our 50th anniversary next  month. I wonder if  Jim and Carolyn are the owners or if the celebrating couple are just being honored before the cafe is sold.

We stayed in Homolovi Ruins State Park two years ago. We spent three winters volunteering at Casa Grande Ruins in Arizona and have visited Mesa Verde National Park, so we are fairly familiar with the native peoples who settled here in the southwest. Although less well known, Homolovi Ruins shows some of their settlements. Modern-day Hopi people believe this was the home of their ancestors.

This informational kiosk tells about one of the villages visitors can explore here in the park, Homolovi I. A second village, Homolovi II, is a little over two miles away, at another location in the park.

If you are interested in more information about Homolovi Ruins, you can check out my blog from two years ago here of the park's web site here.

Mormon settlers also came to this area in 1876, under the leadership of General Lot Smith. They moved on in 1881 after a number of floods on the nearby Little Colorado River. The settlement's cemetery is near Homolovi I.

We were interested to see that a couple of the trails in the park had been constructed by Elderhostel groups (now Road Scholar).

We saw a couple of interesting RVs here in the state park campground. They are earth cruisers, all terrain RVs. Originally built in Australia, they are now built in the U.S. to be shipped throughout the world. You can get more information about them here.

History and the Poor Farm

The Arizona Historical Society Pioneer Museum in Flagstaff is housed in the 1908 Coconino County Hospital for the Indigent--aka the Poor Farm. It was called the poor farm because patients that were able worked in the fields where food was grown for the patients and live-in staff.

Polio was one of the diseases treated there. They had an iron lung on display. I can remember polio scares when I was a young child. During the hottest part of the summer, our parents wanted us to play quietly and not get over-heated. John's late brother-in-law, Russ, had polio as a child. I also remember the first polio vaccine, available in 1953. In 1952, there had been 58,000 new cases of polio in the U.S. By 1957, that number had been reduced to 6,000. By 1994, polio had been virtually eliminated in the Western hemisphere. 
One sign in the museum said one woman had lived in an iron lung for 58 years.  I can't imagine that.

There were dioramas in the museum showing what the hospital ward and private rooms looked like. This was the six-bed ward.

Early Flagstaff was a lumber town, with shipment of the lumber facilitated by the arrival of the railroad. There was a display of tools of that industry.

In front of the museum, three cars from a lumber company train were on display. Look at the size of the logs on the train.

The most interesting part of the museum was on the second floor of the old hospital. Several items from each decade from the 1880s through the 1960s were displayed, as well as information on cost of living in each decade.

Look at this adding machine from the 1910s.

This permanent wave machine is from the 1920s, I think.

Look at this old chain saw--1930s, I think.

Any of you remember hair dryers like this as the beauty shop?  I think they were around in the 1950s  and 1960s.













I just had to include this old treadle sewing machine. I never used one, though there was one in my sewing classroom in junior high. We did have a similar, electric, sewing machine when I was growing up. That is where I learned to sew.

 I was interested in the cost of various items over the decades. In the 1910s, butter cost 36 cents a pound, eggs 39 cents a dozen and a washing machine, $7.15. The next decade, butter had gone up to 70 cents a pound, eggs to 78 cents a dozen and an electric washing machine to $85.

During the 30s, butter cost 46 cents a pound, eggs 52 cents a dozen and a washing machine $74.50. The 40s were less expensive, with butter at 42 cents, eggs at 45 cents and a washing machine at $48. Prices went up in the 50s, with butter at 74 cents, eggs at 67 cents, and a washing machine cost $65.

In the 1960s, butter was 74 cents, eggs 65 cents, and a washing machine an astonishing $314.95. I think you can buy a basic top-loading washer for that today. However, the high efficiency machines are close to $1000.

Downtown Williams

Before leaving Williams, we walked around that city's downtown. It has a very different feel than Flagstaff, evoking Route 66 of the 1920's through the 1950's, instead of the early railroad days.

I posed with Elvis as we walked around.

A number of the downtown restaurants have outdoor seating and live music, like this one.

Doesn't these signs make you think of the mid-20th century?

Whoever owns this truck obviously parks it under a tree for shade and doesn't worry about the deposits left by birds.

An Interesting Downtown

Downtown Flagstaff is a mixture of the old and the new. The city was first settled in 1876 and grew rapidly during the 1880s with the arrival of the railroad. Some of the buildings give a glimpse of years gone by.

This building was obviously built many years ago.

The outside staircases (or fire escapes) indicate an era now gone.

If you look closely at the left side of this building, you can see tall vents running up the side. We wondered if these once vented wood stoves.

This attractive building, which houses St. Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church, has obviously been standing for many, many years. They don't build anything like this today, unfortunately.

We saw a couple of modern murals on the side of buildings. While new, one depicts an age long gone.

One store had fancy caramel apples. We didn't buy one. They are hard to eat as you walk down the street.

Flagstaff is a very bike-friendly city, maybe in part because it is home to Northern Arizona University. There are paved bike paths around the city, the buses have bike racks on the front and rear, and we saw this fancy, crochet-covered bike rack downtown.