By Wendy Howell | Daily Miner
As a bill to designate Route 66 as a National Historic Trail moves to the Senate, supporters of the initiative are hitting the road in hopes of garnering support for its passage.
On July 12, David Zimmerman of the Arizona Historic Preservation Association addressed the Williams City Council about the latest developments of the bill and to encourage the council to get behind the initiative.
“This will be the 20th National Historic Trail nationwide,” Zimmerman said. “Some studies out of NAU have found that Route 66 is the second most popular reason to come to Arizona, after the Grand Canyon.”
H.R. 801 would amend the National Trails System Act to designate a trail of approximately 2,400 miles extending from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California, as the Route 66 National Historic Trail.
The Route 66 National Historic Trail would be administered by the Secretary of the Interior, acting through the National Park Service. The bill calls for the administration to conduct the trail in a manner that respects and maintains the idiosyncratic nature of the Route 66 National Historic Trail.
The bill would provide a permanent program to preserve, promote and economically develop the highway.Proponents of the preservation of Route 66 are concerned that millions of federal dollars could be lost when the National Park Service Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program, passed in 1999, expires in 2019.
In early July, Route 66 was listed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2018 list of America’s 11 most endangered historic places.
