THERE are 191 turns in eight miles,' says the woman, who smiles as she warns of the Oatman Highway just up the road. She is a clerk in Cool Springs Station, the last roadside stop before this treacherous part of Route 66 in north-west Arizona. Just stick to the speed limit and there's nothing to worry about.' She knows the face of a concerned traveller when she sees one.
I'm right to be worried. Dangerous Roads, a website dedicated to highlighting the world's most difficult routes, describes this stretch as having 'very few guardrails giving you no leeway for error'. It is, indeed, technical, with steep drops that will put the fear in your passenger if they peer out of the window. It's also high-the summit of Sitgreaves Pass topping out at 3,595ft above sea level. Those brave enough to drive it will be rewarded with a visit to the Gold Rush town of Oatman itself located after the summit. They can also brag that they've driven one of the oldest stretches of Route 66.
The Oatman Highway is very different to much of Route 66, which once followed a broadly diagonal line of tarmac from Chicago, Illinois, all the way to Los Angeles, California. The route was intended to make cross country travel easier, as well as boosting the income of the small towns it severed. The route was decommissioned nearly 40 years ago in 1985 and celebrates its centenary in 2026, so what does 'the Main Street of America' look like today?
Denne historien er fra September 25, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra September 25, 2024-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Give it some stick
Galloping through the imagination, competitive hobby-horsing is a gymnastic sport on the rise in Britain, discovers Sybilla Hart
Paper escapes
Steven King selects his best travel books of 2024
For love, not money
This year may have marked the end of brag-art’, bought merely to show off one’s wealth. It’s time for a return to looking for connoisseurship, beauty and taste
Mary I: more bruised than bloody
Cast as a sanguinary tyrant, our first Queen Regnant may not deserve her brutal reputation, believes Geoffrey Munn
A love supreme
Art brought together 19th-century Norwich couple Joseph and Emily Stannard, who shared a passion for painting, but their destiny would be dramatically different
Private views
One of the best ways-often the only way-to visit the finest privately owned gardens in the country is by joining an exclusive tour. Non Morris does exactly that
Shhhhhh...
THERE is great delight to be had poring over the front pages of COUNTRY LIFE each week, dreaming of what life would be like in a Scottish castle (so reasonably priced, but do bear in mind the midges) or a townhouse in London’s Eaton Square (worth a king’s ransom, but, oh dear, the traffic) or perhaps that cottage in the Cotswolds (if you don’t mind standing next to Hollywood A-listers in the queue at Daylesford). The estate agent’s particulars will give you details of acreage, proximity to schools and railway stations, but never—no, never—an indication of noise levels.
Mission impossible
Rubble and ruin were all that remained of the early-19th-century Villa Frere and its gardens, planted by the English diplomat John Hookham Frere, until a group of dedicated volunteers came to its rescue. Josephine Tyndale-Biscoe tells the story
When a perfect storm hits
Weather, wars, elections and financial uncertainty all conspired against high-end house sales this year, but there were still some spectacular deals
Give the dog a bone
Man's best friend still needs to eat like its Lupus forebears, believes Jonathan Self, when it's not guarding food, greeting us or destroying our upholstery, of course
