WINSLOW, Ariz. — This city was dead. Stores were boarded up, residents were fleeing, downtown was nothing but weeds and ghosts. You could eat your lunch in the middle of the main street, the mayor says, without fear of being run over.
Then, 10 years ago, something happened. Winslow set out to save its one great building -- a 1930s hotel where movie stars and American icons once stayed -- and the building wound up saving Winslow.
Restoration of the crumbling La Posada triggered a chain reaction of other restorations, which remade Winslow's downtown and revived its economy, while spurring other less obvious "restorations," from the legacy of a brilliant Western architect to the passion of an Orange County peace activist.
Now, this historic city on Route 66, with its smart new public plaza and vogue new coffeehouse, its crowded calendar of art shows and poetry readings, and its own international film festival, is a ghost town no longer. Residents are quick to give credit for the sweeping changes to several local boosters and business leaders -- but they are most grateful to their restored hotel. They speak of La Posada as if it were a person, and describe the connection between city and hotel as an intimate, mutual debt:
Winslow filled the hotel with guests, and the hotel rid Winslow of ghosts.
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The decline of Winslow began more than 50 years ago, with the decline of railroad travel. Winslow was founded in the 1880s as a hub for the Santa Fe Railway and a home for its workers. Janice Griffith, director of the downtown Old Trails Museum, says Winslow was once a city whose heart and soul ran on rails.
During World War II, 3,500 troops bound for combat in the Pacific would stop each day in Winslow to be fed. Some days, residents would watch as trains arrived from the opposite direction, draped in black bunting, laden with bodies of boys killed in battle.
"The train would have 1,400 caskets and a three-man crew," Griffith says. "What this did was create a sense of compassion and support between townspeople and all arrivals. When you're a travel town, you develop that kind of relationship to people coming through."
By the 1970s, however, fewer people were coming through. The decline of railroad travel was followed by the opening of Interstate 40, which bypassed Winslow altogether. Overnight, Route 66 became a back road, Winslow a backwater. Traffic vanished, and with it went bars, cafes, gas stations -- life. The population swooned by 20%, to 8,000.
