At first glance, the nearly 90-year-old motel appears to be another crumbling relic from the famed highway’s early years as a bustling thoroughfare for hundreds of thousands of Americans traveling between Los Angeles and Chicago.

But this isn’t just a fading Route 66 roadside attraction.

Six years after El Pueblo motel opened its doors, with the country plunged into World War II following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the motel’s proprietor, Philip Johnston, devised a plan to enlist Navajo men into the U.S. Marines Corps. Their mission: create a secret code based on Diné Bizaad, the unwritten Navajo language, that could not be broken.

It’s believed that Johnston’s motel served as a recruitment outpost and way station for some new recruits en route to the Southern California base where they would train to become Navajo Code Talkers.

From an initial group of 29, more than 400 Navajo men would eventually become Code Talkers, rapidly transmitting hundreds of thousands of encrypted messages through some of the fiercest battles in the Pacific theater — messages that opposing forces never deciphered.

“Without these brave men and their knowledge of their language, the war in the Pacific would have been prolonged with great human loss,” then-U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-CO, said during a 2001 congressional Gold Medal ceremony for the first 29 Code Talkers. “And maybe it would not have turned out the way it did.”

Of the 400 or so Code Talkers, only two are alive today: Peter MacDonald and Thomas H. Begay. Both men sat down with the Chicago Tribune this summer to talk about their experiences during the war and their hopes for the El Pueblo Motor Inn.

This is the story of the last two Code Talkers and the mastermind behind the top secret program whose Route 66 motel faces an uncertain future.

Two teens join the Marines

Fearful those same planes would strike closer to home, Begay found a Marine Corps recruiter in Gallup, N.M., near his family’s home. There was one catch: Begay was likely only 16 — his birthdate was never recorded. Because his age was “flexible” as Begay once described it, the recruiter said he could enlist with a parent’s permission. His mom signed the necessary form with a thumbprint in place of her name.

Like Begay, MacDonald wouldn’t let his age stop him from joining the fight.

The way he saw things, a soldier had to run fast and shoot straight. And he was just as fast as his 18-year-old cousin, who was already a Marine, and just as accurate with a hunting rifle.

So, in 1944, a then-15-year-old MacDonald and his cousin drove to a recruitment office in northwest New Mexico, where the cousin signed a form saying MacDonald was 17.

Later, sitting on a cold steel truck bed on a chilly evening heading to his barracks, he would briefly regret his decision and entertain the notion of desertion — until a Navajo friend sitting next to him reminded MacDonald that he could either stay in the Marines or go to jail for lying on an official government document.

MacDonald had hoped to join an artillery or tank unit. Begay wanted to be an aerial gunner. Instead, both were shipped to the Marine Corps communications school outside San Diego. They learned Morse code, how to repair radios, how to quickly climb coconut trees to tie telephone lines and rapidly descend before being picked off by Japanese sharpshooters.

Once that training was over, they and other Marines — all of them Navajo — were sent to a restricted area on the base with separate barracks. A large sign warned all others to keep out.

That was when MacDonald and Begay first learned they were training to become Code Talkers, and when they first met the staff sergeant leading that training: Philip Johnston.

“He’s the one,” joked Begay, “who got us in trouble.”

‘The one who got us in trouble’

He was apparently so well-versed in the language that in 1901, at age 9, he traveled with his dad to Washington, D.C., to translate land negotiations between a group of Navajo leaders and newly elected U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt.

Johnston attended what’s now called Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and served in the U.S. Army during World War I. It’s possible it was during that conflict that the seeds that became the Navajo Code Talkers first took root; soldiers from at least a half-dozen different Native American tribes — including the Choctaw, Ho-Chunk and Comanche — sent coded messages in their native languages during the Great War.

Around 1936, he and his wife opened the El Pueblo Motor Inn on Route 66, commissioned a decade earlier. Three Spanish colonial-style buildings with attached carports provided six rooms for guests. A fourth building near the road served as the office.

By the time the United States entered World War II in 1941, a nearly 50-year-old Johnston was living in Los Angeles and working as a civil engineer for the city.

In a collection of his writings and photographs kept in a special collection at Northern Arizona University’s Cline Library, he wrote of his frustration at being too old, it seemed, to join the conflict.

“Chances were overwhelming,” he wrote, “that the most deadly weapons I could wield in this war were a slide rule and pencil.”

After reading a news story about an armored division’s attempt to send secret messages via soldiers from one Native American tribe, he met with a lieutenant colonel at Camp Elliott, near San Diego.

“Colonel,” he wrote of that meeting, “what would you think of a device that would assure you of complete secrecy when you send or receive messages on the battlefield?”

What Johnston proposed was impossible, the lieutenant colonel responded. No code was completely secure. Even codes based on Native languages, as Johnston had suggested, were inherently flawed. They either lacked certain words for essential military terms or had been studied by other countries after the success of Native Code Talkers in WWI.

The Navajo language had never been written down, Johnston argued, so it could not be studied. Its complexities made it difficult to learn outside of Navajo members or those who, like Johnston, grew up immersed in the language.

To illustrate the point, Johnston wrote, he uttered a few Navajo words to the lieutenant colonel and asked, “Tell me if you honestly believe that anyone but a Navajo could understand them.” He repeated them again, slower.

“Dammit, Mr. Johnston,” the man replied, “you may have something there! I’d like very much to see some of these Navajos.”

About two weeks later, Johnston returned to the base with a few Navajo men, ready to demonstrate for select commanders how the code could work.

Soon, the newly enlisted Marine Corps staff sergeant would head into the Navajo Nation to find recruits, using El Pueblo motel as a base for that effort and as a place for candidates to stay before heading to their Southern California base.

Twenty-nine Navajo men were eventually tasked with crafting the code.

The irony of the moment was not lost on those first Code Talkers and the ones who came after. Here was a country that repeatedly sought to eradicate their culture, if not their very existence. That had, less than 80 years earlier, forced at gunpoint tens of thousands of Navajo men, women and children to march some 300 miles from their homes to an internment camp at Bosque Redondo, N.M. That set up boarding schools where Native American children were punished for speaking their language.

Now, that same country needed their language.

‘It was a bad place’

By the time Begay, and later MacDonald, arrived at Camp Pendleton, the battle-tested code contained hundreds of words.

All 26 letters in the alphabet were represented by a corresponding Navajo word or words. The letter A, for example, could be wol-la-chee (ant) or be-la-sana (apple) or tse-nill (axe). A submarine was a besh-lo, or iron fish. A bomber plane was a jay-sho, or buzzard.

Code Talkers had to commit every word to memory. Nothing could be written down to ensure the code would not fall into enemy hands.

Begay would find himself thrust into one of the war’s most infamous and deadly battles. In February 1945, while aboard the USS Cecil, his unit landed on the beach at Iwo Jima. One Code Talker, a friend of his, had been killed in a bombing at an airfield. A second died from a Japanese sniper’s bullet. Begay was ordered to replace that Code Talker.

He made his way to the front, through gunfire and exploding mortar rounds.

“It was a bad place,” he remembered, sitting in a veterans memorial park in Albuquerque, N.M. “Nothing but rock. No place to hide. No place to dig a fox hole.”

Japanese troops dug a network of tunnels in the 8-square-mile island’s volcanic rock. At one point, Begay remembered, three Japanese soldiers “came out of nowhere,” maybe 40 feet away. Begay raised his rifle in their direction. Someone in his unit yelled for him to hold his fire. One of the Japanese soldiers was naked. The others wore tattered uniforms. They repeated only one word: mizu.

Water.

During the first two days of the invasion, six Code Talkers “sent and received more than 800 error-free messages,” reported Maj. Howard Connor, 5th Division signal officer. “Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.”

A post-war secret revealed

After serving with units in Guam and northern China, MacDonald earned an engineering degree from the University of Oklahoma and worked to develop the Polaris missile system for the Hughes Aircraft Co., founded by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes.

In 1971, he was elected chairman of the Navajo Nation. His four nonconsecutive terms ended in scandal. Ousted by the Nation’s council in 1989 amid corruption allegations — his removal sparked a deadly riot in an attempt to restore his chairmanship — MacDonald was eventually convicted in tribal and federal court of charges including fraud, racketeering and bribery. He was later pardoned by the Nation and his sentence commuted by President Bill Clinton.

Struggling to find post-war employment, Begay enlisted in the U.S. Army and fought in the Korean War. Back home, he worked as a senior administrator with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

For years after WWII, both men were forced to say nothing about the Code Talkers. Not even their families knew what they had done during the war. Their work remained classified until 1968. One night, sitting with his family around the dinner table, Begay revealed his secret.

“We didn’t know what he was talking about,” remembered his son, retired Army Lt. Col. Ronald C. Begay.

The Navajo Code Talkers were eventually honored in 1982 with a congressional resolution establishing National Navajo Code Talkers Day on Aug. 14, and congressional Medals in 2001.

“In war, using their native language, they relayed secret messages that turned the course of battle,” then-President George W. Bush said during a medal ceremony. “At home, they carried for decades the secret of their own heroism. Today, we give these exceptional Marines the recognition they earned so long ago.”

A motel’s uncertain future

As for Johnston, his post-war years are a bit of a mystery. He retired from civil service and gave talks on the Navajo language — including one in 1954 (14 years before the Code Talker program was declassified) that, according to a Los Angeles Times brief, touched on its use “as code for secret communications” during the war. He died in 1978, six days before his 86th birthday.

Johnston and his wife sold El Pueblo motel in 1947. It changed hands several times in the ensuing years. Subsequent owners sold off pieces of the property, converted carports to guestrooms, added a roadside sign and a fifth building and transitioned the motel from tourists to weekly rentals.

The property was last sold in 2007, county records show. Current owner Nava Thuraisingam also heads the Tempe, Arizona-based Kind Hospitality, which operates around two-dozen restaurants, most in Arizona.

Thuraisingam did not respond to interview requests for this story.

Around 2018, Thuraisingam hired Flagstaff realtor Jacquie Kellogg to sell the now-vacant El Pueblo motel. After learning its history, she tried to marshal public awareness and resources toward restoring the motel and commemorating its association with the Code Talkers.

The campaign garnered plenty of attention but ultimately fizzled.

“Everyone thinks it’s the coolest thing,” she said, “but nobody wants to do anything about it.”

Though eligible, the property does not appear on the National Register of Historic Places, nor does it have local historic landmark designation. A Flagstaff City Council report from last month says Thuraisingam did not want to pursue local historic designation and had been advised by financiers not to seek its inclusion on the national register in fear it “may limit the development potential of the property.”

An architect hired by Thuraisingam submitted plans in 2020 to restore the motel’s three guest room buildings and office. Two years later, revised plans from a different architect called for a “substantial motel building” behind the three historic buildings, which had been essentially gutted in preparation for rehabilitation.

Those plans also noted the office had deteriorated to the point it could not be saved. It has since been razed.

“It’s not in great shape right now,” said Flagstaff Councilmember Khara House, who requested a council discussion on the motel’s preservation. But, she added, “there’s a glimmer of hope.”

Kellogg is less optimistic.

“It’s just gonna rot away until somebody tears it down,” she said. “It’s very frustrating.”

“The guy that actually envisioned the Navajo code was Philip Johnston, and he needs to be recognized,” MacDonald said from his home in Tuba City, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation. “Flagstaff should be proud. Set up a huge statue of some sort for (Johnston). Yes, the motel may be bad. But do something.”

This summer, a new realty firm listed the property for sale. Asking $2.75 million, the listing notes that two of the five original buildings are gone, “with the remaining structures reduced to studs, providing an open slate for redevelopment.”

“With high traffic flow and prominent exposure, this site is ideal for a variety of commercial uses including lodging, dining, retail, or mixed-use development,” the listing continues. “Don’t miss this rare opportunity to reimagine a landmark location in a high-demand area.”

The Chicago Tribune and Chicago Public Media petitioned U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis to release the recordings, which were filed under seal as part of a lawsuit led by the Chicago Headline Club, a nonprofit journalism advocacy organization, and a consortium of other media groups. The journalism organizations allege federal immigration enforcement officials have systematically violated the constitutional rights of protesters and reporters during President Donald Trump’s mass deportation mission, which began in early September and shows no sign of slowing down.

Ellis, who issued a temporary restraining order last month, announced Thursday that she will put longer-term restrictions on federal agents’ use of chemical agents on crowds and provide enhanced protections for protesters and members of the media.

The released videos can be seen in their entirety on the Tribune’s YouTube channel, but here are some of the highlights:

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in Chicago

Bovino, who is leading Trump’s immigration enforcement effort in the Chicago area, testified that he is leading roughly 220 U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents as part of the so-called Operation Midway Blitz. He said he reports directly to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

‘More than exemplary’

Asked by veteran Chicago civil rights attorney Locke Bowman if he stood by remarks he made to CBS that the use of force at the Broadview ICE facility has been “exemplary,” Bovino at first surprised everyone by saying, “No.”

“The uses of force have been more than exemplary,” Bovino clarified.

In placing longer-term restrictions Thursday, Ellis disagreed.

“The use of force shocks the conscience,” she said.

‘Violent rioters’

During the deposition, Bovino said he had not witnessed his agents using tear gas or pepper-spray balls against protesters in Broadview, but chemical agents were used against “violent rioters” and “assaultive subjects.”

Definition of a protester

When asked to define “protester,”  Bovino said it’s a person “exercising their constitutional rights to speak — to speak their opinion, to speak their mind in a peaceful fashion … in accordance with laws, rules and with the Constitution.”

“We get protesters on both sides of the issue. Sometimes they protest against, say, a Title 8 immigration enforcement mission, tell us they don’t like it, we shouldn’t be there, we need to go home, use very foul language oftentimes,” he said. “And then there’s also protesters on the other side of the issue that say ‘hey, you should be there. We’re glad you’re here. Continue to be here.’ So, I look at those as peaceful individuals exercising their right to, one, be there and, two, speak their mind. It’s freedom of assembly, freedom of speech.”

Bovino then rattled off a list of public actions he said his agents have experienced, actions he uses to draw a distinction between protesters and “violent rioters” or “assaultive subjects”: “Removing masks, kicking agents, grabbing agents’ groins, assisting and abetting prisoners from escaping, shooting fireworks, knifing and slashing tires with weapons, throwing rocks through windows of vehicles to hurt agents and/or detainees.”

‘Not a reportable use of force’

On the video, Bovino is asked about an Oct. 3 arrest he made involving a man protesting outside the Broadview facility. According to the complaint, Bovino ordered a man to move down the street after the man told him, “you love to be on television.” As the man started to move, the complaint states, Bovino “stepped across a barrier,” tackled the man and arrested him.

During the Nov. 4 deposition, Bovino said the arrest “was not a reportable use of force. I placed him under arrest. I didn’t tackle him.”

More about Bovino’s interaction with the protester

Bovino was asked about an encounter with the man, Scott Blackburn, who was protesting at Broadview. The lawyer and Bovino disagreed over whether he used force when he tackled the protester.

“He doesn’t like the fact that you are instructing him to move down,” the lawyer said to Bovino.

Bovino objected to the lawyer’s characterization, saying instead, “That individual is failing to follow instructions to vacate the area.”

The video shows Bovino tackling the protester. But Bovino characterized it a different way.

“I’m imploring Mr. Blackburn, or whoever that individual was, to comply with leaving the area and to comply with instructions,” Bovino said.

Asked if he was “making physical contact,” Bovino said he was. But he denied that it was a use of force, saying it was different than using deadly force or “open-hand strikes.”

But he disputed that he used force against the protester.

“The use of force was against me,” Bovino said.

The judge, however, said she did not believe Bovino’s testimony about force that his agents and he personally inflicted in incidents across the Chicago area.

“In one of the videos, Bovino obviously attacks and tackles the declarant, Mr. Blackburn, to the ground,” Ellis said. “But Mr. Bovino, despite watching this video (in his deposition) says that he never used force.”

Pastor struck in the head

In video taken at a protest outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, the Rev. David Black walks toward the building and appears to talk with someone on the roof. A fellow demonstrator offers Black a bullhorn, which the Presbyterian pastor appears to ignore.

Seconds later, Black begins dodging pepper-spray projectiles fired at him, as another protester lifts his shirt and dances a jig as if daring someone to shoot at him. Black initially takes a few steps back, then moves forward with his arms outstretched, looking up toward the building and talking.

On the video, pepper-spray balls can be seen striking the ground in front of Black. He is then struck in the right arm by one. He appears to try and turn away before he is struck again, this time in the head.

Other protesters quickly gather around him as he kneels or falls to the ground, the recording shows. Bystanders lift him and help spirit him away.

Struck again

On the video, Black returns to sidewalk in front of the detention center with a megaphone in hand. As he appears to speak to someone on the roof, pepper-spray balls are fired in his direction.

A protester appears to try to shield him with a sign, but it doesn’t work. Black is hit in the head again.

Bovino on the incident with Pastor Black

Bovino was asked about Rev. David Black, a Presbyterian pastor who was shot in the head by a federal agent. He declined to answer the question, which was framed as a hypothetical, saying he was “unable to comment on that use of force.”

Pressed further, Bovino said: “I don’t know what the use of force was here. I can’t make a judgment either way because I don’t know.”

For the second time in as many years, it’s been slated for a $2.5 million makeover, courtesy of the federal government, that would transform the building — once a grocery store and, later, a skating rink — into a community center for this historic town of 650 people across the Mississippi River from St. Louis.

And once again, the project has stalled, its future uncertain, amid partisan spending battles in Washington, D.C., and the looming threat of a government shutdown.

“This is a good example of an important community project being held hostage,” said U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, a Springfield Democrat whose district covers Brooklyn and who included the community center as part of her federal appropriations requests in fiscal years 2025 and 2026.

“These communities, and Brooklyn is a great example, are not flush with cash,” she added. “They’re in need of these federal investments (and) the level of uncertainty is creating anxiety.”

There have been plenty of reasons for anxiety, and some signs of hope, in Brooklyn this year as community members and supporters fight to stave off the city’s demise and preserve its legacy as America’s oldest Black town.

In January, the Chicago Tribune profiled Brooklyn: Its founding in the early 1830s as a refuge for free and enslaved Black people. Its days as a thriving entertainment hub. Its eventual decline in the second half of the 20th century and the disparate group of archaeologists, urban planners, preservationists, current residents and former Brooklynites at the center of an ambitious revitalization plan.

Shortly after the story published, staff from U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s office contacted Brooklyn officials to offer federal help. People familiar with those discussions said they included the possible construction of a dual visitor center and museum, but excitement for the plan had been quashed a few months later when it became clear that President Donald Trump’s administration had little appetite for anything that spoke to the country’s history of racism.

A spokesperson for Durbin blamed the Trump administration and congressional Republicans for stymying federal investment in Brooklyn and other Illinois communities, saying their “historic cuts to Medicaid, education and other critical services have also impacted funding for local projects across the country, all to line the pockets of billionaires.”

‘We’ll be ready’

Mayor Trenton Atkins said he is not waiting around for the federal government, nor is he concerned with attempts to whitewash his hometown’s story.

“You can’t erase history,” he said. “It was here before we were, so how can you erase it? We’re going to always have our history in Brooklyn. I think they’re trying to keep our children from learning our history. But it’s up to us to step in and show them.”

Five months ago, the 65-year-old Brooklyn native and former village trustee unseated three-term incumbent Vera Glasper-Banks to become mayor. He’s called the availability of federal dollars a “freeze,” one he expects will eventually thaw.

“We’re trying to put ourselves in a position where when things get better,” he said, “we’ll be ready.”

And so, on a Monday in August, the new mayor boarded a golf cart and toured Brooklyn with a group that included state Sen. Christopher Belt of Swansea and representatives from Norfolk Southern railroad.

Generations of Brooklynites have been wary of continued expansion by the railroad companies whose tracks encircle the village and who, in past decades, have become its largest landowners in combined acreage and parcels.

Atkins, though, has tried to strike a different tone.

“The railroad has been here for years,” he said. “And what people don’t understand — the railroad is part of our history.”

Days after Norfolk Southern’s visit, he hosted a similar tour with officials from the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis. In both cases, he said the companies agreed to clear overgrown and littered lots they own in town. At least a dozen parcels were identified to start, he said, with the ultimate goal of redeveloping the properties.

Spokespeople from both companies confirmed the cleanup efforts have started on select parcels and that the companies are working with the village on economic development opportunities for the land.

“I just feel like Brooklyn has been behind the times for so long,” Atkins said. “Right now, I’m feeling good about it, because we’re getting key stakeholders at the table to talk about how we can change things. … I’m kind of excited to see down the line, like next year, where will we be?”

The mayor said he thinks one of the newly cleared parcels could become the site of a new fire station and village hall; the former has been condemned, the latter in not-much-better shape.

There are plenty of other needs in Brooklyn: Housing. Infrastructure repairs. Jobs and businesses so the village is less economically reliant on the adult entertainment industry, which had been booming but has retracted in recent years.

Before that can happen, though, Atkins said he wants the village to have a clear direction for its future. Helping with that effort is the Chicago-based nonprofit Far South Community Development Corp., which works primarily with communities on the city’s South Side.

Prompted by the Tribune’s coverage of Brooklyn, the organization’s president, Abraham Lacy, said he reached out to Brooklyn’s past administration about volunteering its services.

“I’m amazed as an African American and a person who’s pretty astute on history how I didn’t even know about this,” Lacy said. “I just felt a certain level of wanting, a need, to help. I came down there to say, however which way they want to use us, we want to do it.”

Lacy said he and other volunteers — consultants and urban planners — are in the early stages of research for what could ultimately become a comprehensive village plan, one that incorporates and builds upon last year’s revitalization planning sessions organized by the Western Illinois University-based Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs.

The Trump administration’s posture toward Black history — and the ensuing effects on federal funding allocations — is not deterring that work, Lacy said.

“I don’t think we should give much weight to this administration because they’re a moment in time,” he said. “Although they could delay things from happening, they can’t deny us because, eventually, we’re going to get what we need.”

Illinois, he added, is “a state that invests in people and invests in communities.”

‘A homegrown archaeologist’

While federal grant dollars have, for now, seemingly vanished, Brooklyn has been the recent beneficiary of outside investments.

In July, the National Trust for Historic Preservation awarded a $50,000 grant to the Illinois State Archaeological Survey. The money will help the University of Illinois-based research team partner with the Historical Society of Brooklyn, Illinois to continue excavating sites in search of additional artifacts from the town’s beginnings — evidence they hope will bolster Brooklyn’s eventual inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.

The grant will also fund an afterschool program, focused on archaeology and local history, in the village’s school district as well as an archaeology internship for one local high school student.

“We’re hoping this could lead to a homegrown archeologist,” said Erin Benson, one of the state archaeologists in charge of the grant.

State archaeological survey staffers are also working on separate projects to garner more historic recognition for Brooklyn. One involves making sure Brooklyn is no longer excluded from maps and literature documenting the path of Route 66 — the venerable road once passed through town and is celebrating its centennial next year.

The other involves applying to have Brooklyn’s Civic Center building added to the national register. Built in 1952, the building once hosted talent shows, dances, weddings, funerals and baby showers. Today, it’s been largely replaced as a community gathering spot by the nearby senior center, though it’s still used for some smaller events.

“People called it the heartbeat of the community,” said Laura Shih, an ISAS architectural historian who is working on the national register application. “There’s been so much done in Brooklyn as far as its founding.” But, she added, “there’s the other story of 20th century Brooklyn that doesn’t get talked about in a positive light … that the civic center tells about this really vibrant community that existed in the mid-20th century and could exist again.”

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in September, state archaeologists joined the historical society for a community event in Brooklyn. They excavated a small plot to demonstrate the process and displayed artifacts unearthed in previous digs.

Nearby, on North 4th Street, the historical society celebrated the beginnings of its long-envisioned Mother Priscilla Baltimore Memorial Walkway, named after the woman who, according to oral history, led 11 Black families — some former slaves, some fleeing slavery — across the Mississippi in 1829 to what is now Brooklyn.

Historical society co-founder Roberta Rogers said students and staff from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s engineering school are assisting with the design for the walkway. The goal, she said, is to one day include brick memorial pavers. There will be murals depicting the treacherous river crossings that led to Brooklyn’s creation and the town’s “legends,” people such as blues great Albert King, hair care pioneer Annie Turnbo Malone, Negro Leagues standout Joe “Prince” Henry and jazz musician Hamiet Bluiett. Plaques will honor Baltimore, the town’s founding families and the reverends whose churches served as stops in the Underground Railroad.

At the center is a newly reinstalled granite monument to Brooklyn’s founding, inscribed with a passage that ends: “Brooklyn’s survival despite formidable odds is testament to its proud past, the resiliency of its people, and great hope for the future.”

He and his friends used to run to a nearby building at night and wait for the passing vehicles’ headlights to cast their shadows on the white stucco wall. They danced and watched their shadows change as the cars neared.

“And as a car left,” he remembered, “our shadows went with them.”

Delgadillo’s entire life, all 98 years, has played out along what John Steinbeck called “the mother road, the road of flight.” He and his eight siblings grew up on the route; he went to barber college in the Route 66 town of Pasadena, California, and then apprenticed for two years at a barber shop in another route town 43 miles east of his home — Williams, Arizona — before returning to Seligman to run his parents’ pool hall and barbershop.

As Route 66 aficionados look to the historic roadway’s 100th anniversary next year, most agree there would probably not be a centennial to celebrate if not for Delgadillo.

“They’re right,” he said with a smile, sitting in his barbershop chair on a Friday in June.

Follow our road trip: Route 66, ‘The Main Street of America,’ turns 100

An estimated 9,000 cars once passed through Seligman every 24 hours, Delgadillo said, until Interstate 40 bypassed it and other towns along Arizona’s Route 66 corridor. The time, he recalled, was around 2:30 p.m. on Sept. 22, 1978.

“When you lose something so important, your livelihood, how can you forget that moment?” he said. “Listen to me: We knew we were gonna get bypassed, but we did not know how devastating it was going to be. The world just forgot about us. County officials didn’t know about us. State officials, highway officials, the feds — it was like they told us, Angel, if you can swim out of it, swim out of it. If you can’t, drown.”

Businesses shuttered. People left. Delgadillo, his wife Vilma and four children considered doing the same.

Seligman was heading to its grave.

“It was a very, very sad moment,” he said. “First, it was so sad. Then I got so angry.”

Then he did something about it.

Enlisting the help of his older brother Juan, who built the Seligman institution Delgadillo’s Snow Cap, and others, he formed the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona in February 1987. They wrote letters to state highway officials telling them to step in and preserve the route. At first, they were ignored.

“But, you know what,” he said, “those big boys in Phoenix didn’t know who they were up against.”

By November that same year, the state’s transportation department designated 83 miles of Route 66, from Seligman west to Kingman, as a historic road. Delgadillo’s association kept up its pressure, eventually convincing the state to add more miles.

Today, the entire expanse is recognized by the state as a historic road, and Arizona boasts the longest remaining stretch of uninterrupted Route 66 in the country, starting at the California border and ending nearly 160 miles east near Ash Fork.

“To fight the government, you lose. Go to city hall and try to convince them, you lose,” Delgadillo said. “We had to fight our state government and we succeeded. We the people.”

Delgadillo soon fielded phone calls from would-be preservationists in the other seven states the route traverses. They wanted to know how they could protect their portions of the road.

Form your association, he told them.

Delgadillo’s efforts have earned Seligman the title of the “birthplace of historic Route 66,” and Delgadillo, the “guardian angel of Route 66.” He retired from cutting hair a few years ago; the barbershop inside the Route 66 gift shop that bears his and his wife Vilma’s names is now something of a shrine to his and his family’s legacy.

Route 66 travelers from all over the world make a pilgrimage to Seligman to see him. More often than not these days, they see a life-sized cardboard cutout of his likeness instead. When he does stop in, like on that Friday in June, he’s quickly surrounded by people wanting to have their pictures taken with him.

“It’s as though they have known me forever,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s overwhelming. They’re so thankful. It is mind boggling.”

In retirement, he continues to help celebrate his beloved town and route. He started building birdhouses constructed using 100-year-old lumber from his grandparents’ Seligman restaurant that once stood on Route 66 before it was torn down.

Each birdhouse is numbered. Last week, he finished number 268. He has enough wood for another 30.

They sell for $100.66 at the gift shop. The proceeds are being donated to help Seligman construct Route 66 welcome signs at either end of town ahead of next year’s centennial.

Read the sixth dispatch, An Albuquerque neighborhood in peril, here >>>

It’s known as the Arizona Sidewinder, or to locals, simply The Sidewinder.

Eastbound Route 66 leaves California and crosses the Colorado River into Arizona, where it unfurls like a ribbon of pavement approaching the Black Mountains. A Mohave County worker in a small plow truck cleaned debris from the previous night’s storm as the two-lane road ascended 2,700 feet to Oatman.

Local lore says the town was named in honor of Olive Oatman, an Illinois woman whose family was killed by a Native American tribe in the area and who, the story goes, was eventually adopted and raised by a different tribe.

Gold brought the miners who eventually created Oatman, and those miners brought burros to haul rock, water and supplies. When the mines closed, the animals were released into the wild.

Several decades later, they’ve become a popular attraction in town. Shops sell approved pellets and warn visitors against feeding them carrots. On the outskirts, they can bring traffic to a standstill by congregating in the roadway and approaching the open windows of tourists hoping for a photo.

People meandered down Oatman’s main drag lined with shops selling T-shirts, Arizona honey and “real American turquoise.” At the center of the road, a group of maybe 50 converged to watch two men re-create a gunfight between “Outlaw Willie” and “Patton.” The outlaw lost — his second defeat of the day (the first being when his wireless microphone kept cutting out).

Willie (real name Rod Hall, 80) and Patton (Chris Marshman, 70) live in nearby Fort Mohave and have been performing for visitors for 31 years and 25 years, respectively. The gunfight, they say, raises money for Shriners International.

Exiting Oatman, Route 66 morphs into The Sidewinder. This serpentine portion of the road is reported to contain nearly 200 curves, many of them perched precariously on cliff edges absent guardrails. Travelers are warned not to attempt to navigate them in vehicles longer than 40 feet.

Follow our road trip: Route 66, ‘The Main Street of America,’ turns 100

As the road climbed to Sitgreaves Pass, elevation 3,586 feet, the views from a scenic overlook were made more profound by the discovery of a make-shift cemetery with dozens of memorials to deceased loved ones whose cremations were scattered at the site.

Ginny died at the age of 95. Jeremy at 14.

About 25 miles east of Sitgreaves sits the city of Kingman, population 35,000. Outside the city’s railroad museum along its vibrant Route 66 corridor is a bronze statue to Jim Hinckley, an author, historian, tour guide, podcaster, consultant and raconteur.

“I wish they would have waited until I was dead,” joked Hinckley, 68, his face flushed with embarrassment under his wide-brimed cowboy hat. “It’s like attending my own funeral every time I come down here.”

Born on the North Carolina coast, Hinckley said his dad, a Navy and Coast Guard veteran, moved the family outside Kingman after throwing a dart at a paper map he folded to ensure it would land nowhere near water.

A professional path as winding as The Sidewinder — he’s been a rancher, a miner, a rodeo cowboy, a repo man, a truck driver and a mechanic — led him to writing, first about American automobile history and then Route 66.

Hinckley helped curate a self-guided walking tour of the city’s historic district and provides audio narrations of the sites via a QR code on plaques. One tells the story of a former rodeo grounds on the route where, before the road was designated Route 66, the Chicago Cubs played two exhibition games: one in 1917 against a local team and the second in 1924 against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

“Pretty much everything in my life is tied to this road,” he said. “I learned to ride a bicycle, learned to drive on this. My early ranch work was on this road. Courting my wife was tied to this road. It’s the American experience made manifest. For me, it’s just the evolution of myself as well as this country.”

Read the fourth dispatch, a rainy day at the Hackberry General Store, here >>>