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

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

Mines Road

Mines Road is an approximately twenty-eight-mile highway located in the rural parts of the Diablo Range east of the San Francisco Bay Area.  Mines Road begins in San Antonio Valley in Santa Clara County and terminates at Tesla Road near Livermore of Alameda County.  The highway essentially is a modern overlay of the 1840s Mexican haul trail up Arroyo Mocho known as La Vereda del Monte.  The modern corridor of Mines Road took shape in the early twentieth century following development of San Antonio Valley amid a magnesite mining boom.  Part 1; the history of Mines Road Modern Mines Road partially overlays the historic corridor used by La Vereda del Monte (Mountain Trail).  La Vereda del Monte was part of a remote overland route through the Diablo Range primarily used to drive cattle from Alta California to Sonora.  The trail was most heavily used during the latter days of Alta California during the 1840s. La Vereda del Monte originated at Point of Timber between modern day Byron and Bre

Route 75 Tunnel - Ironton, Ohio

In the Ohio River community of Ironton, Ohio, there is a former road tunnel that has a haunted legend to it. This tunnel was formerly numbered OH 75 (hence the name Route 75 Tunnel), which was renumbered as OH 93 due to I-75 being built in the state. Built in 1866, it is 165 feet long and once served as the northern entrance into Ironton, originally for horses and buggies and later for cars. As the tunnel predated the motor vehicle era, it was too narrow for cars to be traveling in both directions. But once US 52 was built in the area, OH 93 was realigned to go around the tunnel instead of through the tunnel, so the tunnel was closed to traffic in 1960. The legend of the haunted tunnel states that since there were so many accidents that took place inside the tunnel's narrow walls, the tunnel was cursed. The haunted legend states that there was an accident between a tanker truck and a school bus coming home after a high school football game on a cold, foggy Halloween night in 1