Where the Tracks Meet the Road: The Story of Flagstaff’s Southside
- Evans Fish & Chips
- Jun 6
- 5 min read
As Flagstaff marks the Centennial of Route 66, it feels like the right moment to look a little closer at the stories that sit just off the main celebration. Beyond the neon signs, road trips, and familiar stretches of highway, there are neighborhoods whose history is just as central to the Route 66 story, even if they are not always highlighted in the spotlight. The Southside is one of those places.
What follows is a closer look at how this part of Flagstaff was shaped long before the highway arrived, how it changed when Route 66 began to define movement through the city, and how its legacy continues to be felt today in the streets just south of the tracks.
A Landscape with Deep Roots
The Southside of Flagstaff didn’t just grow alongside Route 66. It was reshaped by it. The highway brought new opportunity and visibility, but it also layered itself onto older patterns of labor, settlement, and inequality that had already defined how the city was taking shape. To understand the Southside today, you have to understand how movement itself, railroads first, then highways, continually redrew its identity.
From Ancient Crossroads to a Railroad Town
Between the 1400s and the arrival of Europeans, the Flagstaff region remained an active cultural landscape rather than an empty frontier. The Sinagua people had already left their cliff dwellings by around 1400. Still, their descendants lived on through neighboring Indigenous communities, especially the Hopi and Zuni, who continued to use the high country for farming, seasonal travel, and ceremony. By the 1500s, Navajo and Apache peoples were also moving through and settling across northern Arizona, creating a long-standing pattern of movement, trade, and shared territory around the San Francisco Peaks.
Spanish contact began in the 1500s, when expeditions like Coronado’s passed through the broader region, followed later by Franciscan missionaries in the 1600s who entered Hopi villages. Although those missions were eventually abandoned after resistance from Hopi communities, they marked the beginning of sustained outside awareness of the region.
By the mid-1800s, U.S. exploration brought the area into sharper focus. Antoine Leroux, a French-Canadian mountain man and guide, helped lead the 1851 Whipple expedition across northern Arizona while scouting potential railroad routes. His observations of water sources, forest density, and terrain around the San Francisco Peaks helped shape later development.
Permanent non-Indigenous settlement followed in the early 1870s. Edward Whipple’s saloon near Mars Hill in 1871 is often considered the first white settlement in the immediate area, followed by Thomas F. McMillan’s homestead in Fort Valley in 1876, one of the earliest permanent pioneer settlements.
That same year, Flagstaff received its name when settlers raised a flag on a stripped pine during the U.S. Centennial celebration, marking a symbolic shift from scattered presence to named place.
Everything changed again in 1882 with the arrival of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. Flagstaff quickly developed into a transportation and timber hub, and the Southside emerged just south of the tracks as the town’s working district. Built close to rail yards and industry, it became home to a diverse population of laborers and families and formed the foundation of the neighborhood that still exists today.
Route 66 Arrives and Rebuilds the Corridor
When Route 66 was designated in 1926, Flagstaff was pulled into a new era of national automobile travel. Cars replaced trains as the dominant way people moved across the country, and the city found itself directly on one of America’s most famous highways.
The Southside adapted quickly. Boarding houses became motels, small shops became diners and auto courts, and local businesses shifted to serving both residents and passing travelers. The neighborhood became part of a roadside service economy where movement defined daily life.
Segregation and the Green Book Era
Route 66 also existed within a segregated America. During the mid-20th century, African American travelers often faced exclusion from hotels, restaurants, and roadside services along the highway. In many cases, they relied on the Green Book to locate safe and welcoming businesses.
The Southside existed within this broader system of uneven access, shaped by national patterns that determined where people could safely stop, stay, and travel.
After Route 66: A Shift in Movement
When Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985, and traffic shifted to Interstate 40, the Southside’s relationship to national travel changed almost overnight. Businesses that relied on highway visibility lost steady pass-through traffic, and the neighborhood began to reorient toward local life.
Some buildings were repurposed, some businesses closed, and others adapted. The Southside shifted from a highway-driven economy to a community-centered one.
Reinvention and Uneven Growth
In the decades that followed, Flagstaff experienced renewed interest in Route 66 heritage tourism. Downtown saw significant revitalization and investment, while the Southside developed at a different pace.
The railroad tracks continued to act as a visible and functional dividing line in how development, density, and public attention were distributed across the city.
The Southside Today
Today, the Southside remains part of downtown Flagstaff, but it retains a distinct identity shaped by its history. It is a layered neighborhood where historic buildings remain in use, long-standing businesses continue to operate, and gradual redevelopment continues alongside older infrastructure. Crossing the tracks still marks a noticeable shift in the city; not just physically, but in how Flagstaff has grown and where investment has historically concentrated.
The Southside is not defined by a single era. It is the product of centuries of movement: Indigenous migration, railroad expansion, highway travel, and modern redevelopment. Route 66 didn’t just pass through it. It reshaped it, and then it moved on. What remains is a neighborhood still carrying the imprint of everything that came before, and still is evolving in real time.
Sources & Further Reading
U.S. National Park Service — Route 66 in Arizona
Northern Arizona University Special Collections: Route 66 Improvements and Alignments https://library.nau.edu/speccoll/exhibits/route66/improvements.html
U.S. Route 66 in Arizona (overview)
Flagstaff Route 66 and the Green Book (Flagstaff, Arizona Tourism) https://www.flagstaffarizona.org/blog/flagstaff-route-66-and-the-green-book/
Historic Southside Flagstaff — History and Community Context https://www.historicsouthside.com/history
Historic Southside Flagstaff — Mission and Neighborhood Overview https://www.historicsouthside.com/our-purpose
History of Flagstaff, Arizona (overview) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Flagstaff,_Arizona
Northern Arizona University Special Collections — Route 66 Exhibit https://library.nau.edu/speccoll/exhibits/route66/
U.S. National Park Service — Route 66 and the Green Bookhttps://www.nps.gov/articles/000/route-66-and-the-historic-negro-motorist-green-book.htm
Mapping Inequality / Redlining Context (University of Richmond) https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/
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