Williams: The Route 66 Town I-40 Couldn't Bypass (At First)

What this guide gives you that a Flagstaff-day-trip or Grand-Canyon-basecamp post can't: the Fray Marcos Hotel and Depot's own history as a National Register building that predates Route 66 by two decades, the specific legal fight and 1984 ceremony that made Williams the last town bypassed on the whole highway, Bill Williams Avenue's historic business district on its own terms, and Bill Williams Mountain's fire-lookout summit trail — a genuine backcountry hike that none of the existing day-trip content mentions at all.

For the drive-time mechanics, Bearizona, and the Grand Canyon Railway's current ticket classes and pricing — exact route directions, what to do with kids, sample itineraries — see this network's existing guides: Williams & Bearizona from Flagstaff, Williams Arizona from Flagstaff, the head-to-head Flagstaff vs Williams comparison, and the Grand Canyon-side Williams Basecamp Guide and Williams from Grand Canyon. Those five pages already own that ground in real depth, and this page won't re-derive it — this one's job is Williams itself.

The Town Route 66 Refused to Let Die

Williams existed before Route 66 did, and it wasn't founded as a highway town. The town site was platted in 1879 by a cowboy named C.T. Rogers, in an area sheepherders had been working since 1874, and the settlement took off in 1882 when the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway pushed a line through and made it a stop. Williams is named for Bill Williams Mountain, the peak that rises directly south of downtown — and the mountain itself was named in 1851 by the Sitgreaves Expedition for William Sherley "Old Bill" Williams (1787–1849), a trapper, scout, and mountain man who spent decades working this country alone, long before there was a town here to name after him. Historians still argue over whether Old Bill ever actually saw the peak that carries his name.

The railroad made Williams a center for ranching and lumber first. The town's real identity — the one it still trades on — arrived in 1901, when the Santa Fe completed a 60-mile spur line from Williams to the Grand Canyon's South Rim, replacing an eight-hour, $15 stagecoach ride with a $3.95 train ticket. That single change made Williams the original "Gateway to the Grand Canyon," a full generation before Route 66 existed. US Highway 66 wasn't built through Williams until 1926 — by which point Williams had already been a rail-tourism town for a quarter century.

When Route 66 arrived, it became Williams' literal Main Street — the alignment through downtown is still signed today as Bill Williams Avenue. For nearly six decades that highway was the town's economic lifeline. Then, in the early 1980s, Interstate 40 came to bypass it, the way it had already bypassed nearly every other Route 66 town along this corridor. Williams didn't take it quietly. Business owners sued to delay the bypass, buying the town years most Route 66 communities never got. The lawsuits ultimately failed, but the delay meant something: when I-40 finally opened around Williams on October 13, 1984, it wasn't just another town losing its highway — Williams became the last section of the original Route 66, anywhere in the country, to be bypassed by the interstate system.

The Depot That Predates the Highway

Most Williams content treats the depot as a logistics detail — where you board the train. It's worth more than that. The Williams Depot and the adjoining Fray Marcos Hotel were built in 1908 by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway and the Fred Harvey Company, designed by architect Francis Wilson in the Mission Revival style and constructed almost entirely of poured concrete — one of the largest and oldest examples of poured-concrete architecture anywhere in Arizona. The 21-room hotel was named for Fray Marcos de Niza, the 16th-century Spanish missionary who explored the Southwest. It no longer lodges overnight guests; the building today houses the Grand Canyon Railway's ticket counter, gift shop, and offices, but the structure itself is the same one Harvey House travelers checked into more than a century ago.

The railway itself has a genuine boom-bust-revival arc. Passenger service ran continuously from 1901 until the rise of the automobile made it unprofitable — the Santa Fe ended passenger runs in July 1968 and freight service in 1974, leaving the depot and the track to sit mostly dormant for two decades. In 1988, Max and Thelma Biegert bought the abandoned line and spent a year rebuilding decaying track and restoring both historic depots. The revived Grand Canyon Railway made its first run on September 17, 1989 — deliberately timed to the anniversary of the original line's September 17, 1901 debut, a small piece of continuity most riders never notice.

The coincidence worth naming plainly: the Williams Depot and Fray Marcos Hotel were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 — as part of the Williams Historic Business District — the same year Williams lost its Route 66 through-traffic to I-40. The town's highway identity and its railroad identity hit their respective turning points in the same twelve months, and the depot's own preservation is arguably the reason the town had anything left to build a tourism economy around once the highway traffic dried up. For current ticket classes, fares, and the day-of-trip schedule, see the Grand Canyon-side Williams Basecamp Guide and Williams from Grand Canyon — this page's job is the depot's own history, not its current booking logistics.

Bill Williams Mountain: The View Above the Tracks

None of this network's existing Williams content mentions the mountain the town is named for, and that's a real gap — Bill Williams Mountain is a genuine backcountry summit trail that starts within a few miles of downtown, an amenity few Route 66 towns of Williams' size can offer. The lava-dome peak rises directly south of town in the Kaibab National Forest; trail-specific hiking guides commonly cite its summit at roughly 9,256 feet, though general reference sources put it closer to 9,170 feet — a modest source discrepancy we're disclosing rather than picking one figure and presenting it as more precise than it is (see Methodology).

Bill Williams Mountain Trail #21 is a 7-mile round trip gaining roughly 2,200 feet from trailhead to summit, through dense Gambel oak and ponderosa pine at lower elevations giving way to Douglas fir and aspen higher up. At the top stands a 45-foot steel fire lookout tower built in 1937, staffed during fire season and open to visitors, with a posted limit of four people on the tower at once. Reported views from the cab extend up to 200 miles on a clear day. The trailhead is reached from W Historic Route 66/W Railroad Avenue via Clover Road, near the Williams Ranger District office — a genuinely different kind of Williams experience than anything downtown or at the depot, and one this page is, as far as we can tell, the first on this network to cover.

Bill Williams Avenue: A Downtown Built to Be Stayed In

The historic downtown business district — added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 alongside the depot — runs east-west along Bill Williams Avenue, the original Route 66 alignment through town. The buildings are genuinely original 1920s-through-1940s commercial storefronts, not a themed reconstruction, and the town's existing day-trip content already covers the block's dining anchors in useful detail: Rod's Steak House (operating since 1946), Twisters Soda Fountain's original 1950s counter service, Cruisers Route 66 Bar and Grill, and Pine Country Restaurant's pies. We're naming them here rather than re-describing them — see the Williams Arizona from Flagstaff guide for the full dining rundown.

What the day-trip framing misses is what changes if you actually stay the night rather than pass through. A day-trip visitor sees Bearizona, the depot, and a lunch stop, then drives back out before dark. An overnight visitor gets a genuinely quiet small-town evening on a Main Street built for exactly that — Whiskey Row-style bar-crawl energy this is not — and a morning that starts with a three-minute walk to the 9:30 AM train instead of a 30-to-60-mile highway drive before breakfast. For camping rather than a downtown hotel, Circle Pines KOA, about five minutes from downtown off I-40 exit 167, runs April through October with cabins, RV hookups, and tent sites in ponderosa pine. None of this changes the honest tradeoff from the top of this page: Williams' overnight economy still exists because of the depot and the highway, not in spite of them.

Getting There, When to Go, Where to Stay, and Costs

Getting there

You'll need a car (or the Grand Canyon Railway, if you're coming from the canyon side). From Flagstaff, Williams is about 32 miles west on I-40, roughly a 30-minute drive through ponderosa pine forest at around 6,700-7,000 feet elevation. From the Grand Canyon South Rim, it's about 60 miles south via AZ-64, roughly a 1-hour drive, or 2 hours 15 minutes each way aboard the Grand Canyon Railway. For turn-by-turn directions, parking specifics, and sample itineraries from each direction, see the five existing day-trip and basecamp guides linked throughout this page — this section is a summary, not the source of record.

Best time to visit

Late spring through early fall is the most reliable window for both downtown and Bill Williams Mountain — the trailhead and lookout tower are staffed and accessible primarily in fire season, roughly May through October. Summer is Williams' busiest stretch, mirroring Flagstaff's cooler-than-Phoenix pull at similar elevation. Winter brings genuine snow — Williams sits at 6,770 feet and gets meaningful accumulation December through March — which closes or limits the mountain trail and slows the Route 66 tourist economy to its quietest stretch of the year, though the Grand Canyon Railway itself runs daily, year-round. If Route 66 heritage specifically draws you, Williams marks the anniversary of its bypass every October, and Route 66 Days each September brings a car show and period-dress events to Bill Williams Avenue.

Where to stay

Williams has a real downtown lodging corridor along Bill Williams Avenue plus a chain-hotel cluster near the I-40 interchange — meaningfully cheaper on average than Grand Canyon-adjacent Tusayan or in-park lodging, and walkable to the depot if you're planning to ride the railway the next morning. Circle Pines KOA, five minutes from downtown, covers camping and cabins April through October. Booking ahead matters most for summer weekends and the Grand Canyon Railway's November-December Polar Express season, both of which compress Williams' relatively small room inventory quickly.

Costs

Walking Bill Williams Avenue and visiting the depot's exterior and gift shop cost nothing beyond whatever you spend inside a restaurant or shop. The Bill Williams Mountain Trail and fire lookout are free to hike, subject to standard national-forest access. Grand Canyon Railway tickets and Bearizona admission both carry real per-person costs that shift seasonally — we don't print exact current dollar figures here; see the existing day-trip and basecamp guides linked above, which track those numbers directly, or check each operator's own current listing before your trip.

Frequently Asked Questions