Well, I’m a standing on a corner
In Winslow, Arizona
And such a fine sight to see
It’s a girl, my lord, in a flatbed
Ford slowin’ down to take a look at me

-- “Take it Easy” by Jackson Browne

A half century ago, before Interstate-40 snaked its way west to Northern Arizona, Winslow was one of the largest cities in the state’s northland, with tourists famous and unknown stopping for the night, often staying downtown at La Posada Hotel, designed by renowned Western architect Mary Colter.

But not long after the freeway bypassed Winslow in the 1970s, the downtown rapidly declined. Pete Kretsedemas, who with his brothers Jim and George emigrated from Greece and ran the Falcon Restaurant for 43 years, remembers the bustling town of Winslow when he stepped off the train in the mid-1950s. He also remembers vividly when I-40 bypassed Winslow 25 years later.

“It was 1979, and I can tell you the day and the hour. It was October 9, about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. (The restaurant) was open that day,” he recalled. “And you know you hear the traffic go by, up and down. And all of a sudden – nothing. Like you shut the water off in a spigot.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, it’s been since 1930 that Winslow’s population was larger than Flagstaff’s, but 20 years later the two towns were competing in population, with Flagstaff at just 1,100 more folks than Winslow’s population of 6,500. After the freeway’s arrival, Winslow’s growth slowed drastically. Today Winslow’s population is just less than 10,000, while Flagstaff’s is more than 60,000.

Winslow: “A Mess”

Allan Affeldt, co-owner of the now-restored La Posada Hotel in Winslow and for three years the town’s mayor, recalled what Winslow looked like when he first moved there from California about a dozen years ago with his wife Tina Mion, a painter whose work now graces the walls of La Posada. They came out to look at the La Posada Hotel, which was not for sale but under the gun for demolition.

“Winslow was a mess,” recalled Affeldt, whose business partner Dan Lutzick, a sculptor, also moved to town and worked with Affeldt to restore the Colter masterpiece. “I would have family and friends come out and say, ‘Great building, Allan, but what are you thinking? No one’s going to stay there, no matter how great the building is. Because to get to the building you have to drive through a trashed-out barrio.’ And that was true. And when we bought the building, most of Winslow was boarded up. Downtown.

“Because, as everywhere, this wasn’t just a problem for Winslow, it was a problem for small-town America: When the freeways came through, all the downtown stores vanished.”

While the interstate system made travel faster, it also created ghost towns of communities throughout the West that couldn’t lure modern tourists off the new four-lane road.

Back to Life?

The Disney-Pixar animated movie “Cars” tells that story through the fictional town of Radiator Springs, which nearly dies after being bypassed by the Interstate. Winslow is one town of many used to inspire the movie, including Cars’ historic hotel that’s modeled after a Spanish hacienda. It’s a Disney movie, so of course there’s a happy ending: The Western town comes back to life.

Winslow, Arizona, hopes for a similar fate.

Today, Winslow may not be the hub of Northern Arizona, but it is in the midst of a comeback -- some residents call it a Renaissance. Sparked by the ongoing restoration of the now-open historic La Posada Hotel, the modern transformation of this small Western town is also due to the efforts of many local volunteers. Even before La Posada’s restoration began, a handful of Winslow citizens kept the La Posada gardens alive when the hotel stood stagnant, partially used as offices for the railroad. Many of those same volunteers worked with the city to get a federal grant to restore the hotel, and newcomer Affeldt came up with matching funds. These volunteers also worked to eliminate the town’s problem with street intoxicants, and later created the “Standing On the Corner Park,” a tribute to the popular Jackson Browne song “Take it Easy,” performed by the Eagles. The song placed Winslow firmly onto everybody’s Route 66 map – and the American consciousness.

“This song of ‘Standing on the Corner’ I’d never heard of it. It was not my generation,” admitted Marie La Mar, Winslow native and an active volunteer in Winslow’s rescue. “But we would find people standing next to anything that said, “Winslow, Arizona,” and they’d have their picture taken. So thanks to the younger minds that helped us, we began focusing on a Standing on the Corner Park.”

The downtown pocket park includes a bronze statute of Jackson Browne that hundreds of tourists pose next to every week, arms draped over the musician’s neck as cameras click away. A mural of the “Girl” (“my lord, in a flatbed Ford”) covers the wall behind the park, and that flatbed Ford is there too, a regular presence in Winslow parades.

La Mar said that the resurgence of her hometown began with the restoration of La Posada, considered the gem of Colter’s architectural work that includes Bright Angel Lodge, the Watchtower and other buildings at the Grand Canyon.

“La Posada brought the community’s self-esteem up, way up,” said La Mar, one of the dozens of modern Harvey Girls who give tours at La Posada. The original Harvey girls were young women who came west to work at the “civilized Fred Harvey hotels and restaurants of the Santa Fe Railway – including La Posada.

While there are still tourists who never turn off the interstate to visit Winslow, plenty do, and others even come to town via Amtrak or private planes that land at the tiny airport designed by Charles Lindbergh.

“Winslow has no place to go but up,” La Mar said.

Changing Attitudes

Affeldt said with the restoration of La Posada, the community began to believe in itself again.

“There were people who wanted to get their town back,” he said. “After 40 years, there were people who remembered what this place was like when everybody stayed here and everybody ate here and if you lived in Flagstaff and you wanted a special celebration, you went to Winslow.”

After the historic hotel reopened in 1997, it welcomed the high school prom, various conferences and car shows.

“So all this stuff started happening in and around the hotel again, and I think it started to change peoples’ attitudes around town about what Winslow could be again,” Affeldt said.
As mayor, he worked to implement a bed, board and booze tax to start a capital-improvement fund.

Besides Winslow growing as an attraction for tourists, residents also see business changes in town that mean they don’t have to travel to Flagstaff for such basics as clothing and groceries.

There’s a new Super Wal-Mart that, unlike other Wal-Marts that have chased away the competition, has paved the way for other new businesses around it, Affeldt said. Safeway just underwent a major remodel and now offers organic food, perhaps as a way to differentiate itself from the Wal-Mart. In addition, Winslow has again become the shopping hub for both the Navajo and Hopi reservations, in addition to offering education for the tribes’ young people.

“We have people drive 30 miles to drive their kids to school. We have people who move, rent a place for the school year, but then go back to the Rez for the summer time. Or the kids go back in the summer but stay in the (BIA) dorm during the school year,” said Docia Blalock, librarian at the Winslow Public Library, which serves much of Northern Arizona. “So we have lots of daily interchange between Navajo and Hopi folks coming into town.”

El Garces in Needles, Calif.

And while Affeldt is still doing work on the La Posada, he and partner Lutzick are also restoring the El Garces Hotel in Needles, Calif., working as project managers on restoring this Harvey House hotel built in 1908.

“The El Garces was abandoned for about 40 years,” said sculptor Lutzick, who lives in the former Babbitt Brothers department store in downtown Winslow. That space serves as his humongous gallery and modest home. “It will be a lot like La Posada – we’ll get to a point where it’s stable and then we’ll bring it up in stages with the idea that it has to have a certain amount of money at each stage for us to continue. So it’s a bit of a risk, but Allan loves that sort of stuff.”

Affeldt said that this kind of “improve as you can afford to” philosophy is what they followed with the La Posada restoration, and what kept them from falling into serious debt, like much of the country’s real estate is facing today.

Their latest dream after getting the Needles Harvey House hotel in shape, and is to entice railway tourists traveling west to stop for a few nights in at La Posada, and then board the train for Needles to visit the El Garces.

Just like in the days of Mary Colter and the Harvey Girls.