Williams Route 66
— — the last town the interstate let go of.
Not only on a wall.
“A two-block stretch of brick storefronts and neon along the original alignment of US Route 66, at the foot of Bill Williams Mountain. Williams was the last Route 66 town to be bypassed by Interstate 40, in October 1984, and the main street still runs east and west as one-way pairs of the old road. Diners, motels, and the Grand Canyon Railway depot sit in the same buildings they sat in seventy years ago. Cool evenings at six thousand seven hundred feet, even in summer. from the studio
Williams Route 66, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Williams sits on the southern flank of Bill Williams Mountain, on the Colorado Plateau at about 6,700 feet, roughly thirty-five miles west of Flagstaff along Interstate 40. The town is the southern terminus of the Grand Canyon Railway, which has run scheduled passenger service to the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park since 1989. The Kaibab National Forest surrounds the town on three sides. The historic Route 66 corridor runs through downtown as a one-way pair, Railroad Avenue eastbound and Bill Williams Avenue westbound.
Williams holds a particular place in Route 66 history as the last town along the route to be bypassed by the interstate system. The final segment of I-40 around Williams opened on October 13, 1984, after a court fight in which the town secured a commitment to three interchanges before allowing the bypass. The decommissioning of US Route 66 followed in 1985. Williams now markets itself as the Gateway to the Grand Canyon and the heart of historic Route 66, and the downtown core is on the National Register.
The Grand Canyon Railway departs the Williams depot daily at 9:30 a.m. for the two-and-a-quarter-hour run to the South Rim, returning by mid-afternoon. Downtown is walkable in twenty minutes end to end. Mid-elevation altitude keeps summer evenings cool; winter brings real snow and the town often opens with chains required on the I-40 grade. The Kaibab National Forest trailheads on Bill Williams Mountain rise to 9,256 feet and remain open year round, though the upper reaches are snowed in from December through March.