Route 66: Meet the Mother Road’s ‘Guardian Angel’

SELIGMAN Arizona They came suddenly and in numbers cars and trucks weighed down with their owners worldly possessions Angel Delgadillo was a boy when those hundreds of thousands of Dust Bowl refugees drove through his tiny hometown on Track heading for California and the promise of work on farms so fertile it was explained that fruit fell from the trees He and his friends used to run to a nearby building at night and wait for the passing vehicles headlights to cast their shadows on the white stucco wall They danced and watched their shadows change as the cars neared And as a car left he remembered our shadows went with them Delgadillo s entire life all years has played out along what John Steinbeck called the mother road the road of flight He and his eight siblings grew up on the passage he went to barber college in the Path town of Pasadena California and then apprenticed for two years at a barber shop in another passage town miles east of his home Williams Arizona before returning to Seligman to run his parents pool hall and barbershop As Path aficionados look to the historic roadway s th anniversary next year majority agree there would possibly not be a centennial to celebrate if not for Delgadillo They re right he announced with a smile sitting in his barbershop chair on a Friday in June Follow our road trip Passage The Main Street of America turns An estimated cars once passed through Seligman every hours Delgadillo revealed until Interstate bypassed it and other towns along Arizona s Way corridor The time he recalled was around p m on Sept When you lose something so fundamental your livelihood how can you forget that moment he commented Listen to me We knew we were gonna get bypassed but we did not know how devastating it was going to be The world just forgot about us County authorities didn t know about us State administrators highway bureaucrats the feds it was like they notified us Angel if you can swim out of it swim out of it If you can t drown Businesses shuttered People left Delgadillo his wife Vilma and four children considered doing the same Seligman was heading to its grave It was a very very sad moment he mentioned First it was so sad Then I got so angry Then he did something about it Enlisting the help of his older brother Juan who built the Seligman institution Delgadillo s Snow Cap and others he formed the Historic Highway Association of Arizona in February They wrote letters to state highway bureaucrats telling them to step in and preserve the journey At first they were ignored But you know what he declared those big boys in Phoenix didn t know who they were up against By November that same year the state s transportation department designated miles of Trail from Seligman west to Kingman as a historic road Delgadillo s association kept up its pressure eventually convincing the state to add more miles In the present day the entire expanse is recognized by the state as a historic road and Arizona boasts the longest remaining stretch of uninterrupted Road in the country starting at the California dividing line and ending nearly miles east near Ash Fork To fight the establishment you lose Go to city hall and try to convince them you lose Delgadillo stated We had to fight our state ruling body and we succeeded We the people Delgadillo soon fielded phone calls from would-be preservationists in the other seven states the direction traverses They requested to know how they could protect their portions of the road Form your association he communicated them Delgadillo s efforts have earned Seligman the title of the birthplace of historic Track and Delgadillo the guardian angel of Trail He retired from cutting hair a limited years ago the barbershop inside the Road gift shop that bears his and his wife Vilma s names is now something of a shrine to his and his family s legacy Direction travelers from all over the world make a pilgrimage to Seligman to see him More often than not these days they see a life-sized cardboard cutout of his likeness instead When he does stop in like on that Friday in June he s rapidly surrounded by people wanting to have their pictures taken with him It s as though they have known me forever he stated with a chuckle It s overwhelming They re so thankful It is mind boggling In retirement he continues to help celebrate his beloved town and course He started building birdhouses constructed using -year-old lumber from his grandparents Seligman restaurant that once stood on Track before it was torn down Each birdhouse is numbered Last week he finished number He has enough wood for another They sell for at the gift shop The proceeds are being donated to help Seligman construct Track welcome signs at either end of town ahead of next year s centennial Read the sixth dispatch An Albuquerque neighborhood in peril here The journey along Way map to Seligman Arizona June