Columnist Susan Snyder: City gets to route of problem

Monday, June 16, 2003 | 8:08 a.m.

City officials aren't sure visitors are getting the right kicks when they cruise into Kingman, Ariz., looking for Route 66.

A marketing consultant has suggested visitors searching for the famous cross-country highway aren't finding it because inside Kingman Route 66 is officially Andy Devine Avenue. City officials are to discuss a name change in a meeting today.

Devine, who died in 1977, was a Kingman-raised, B-team cowboy in westerns that were popular on the big screen in the 1930s through the 1950s. His moniker was bestowed on Kingman's east-west main drag in 1955 on the national television show, "This Is Your Life."

But 48 years later city officials say the big green highway signs directing visitors onto Andy Devine Avenue leave many wondering: Where's Route 66?

"We're on the largest remaining stretch of Route 66," Beverly Liles, executive director of the Kingman Chamber of Commerce, said of the 165-mile stretch from Ash Fork to Topock, southwest of Kingman.

The chamber favors keeping both names.

"The older visitors want to know what our affiliation with Andy Devine is. The younger ones want to know who he was," Liles said.

Once drivers turn onto Devine Avenue, "Route 66" is plastered everywhere -- on street signs, buildings, businesses. A gift shop inside the Powerhouse Visitor's Center hawks Route 66 T-shirts, luggage, license plates, baby bibs, bumper stickers, bottles and even pot holders.

Andy who?

At 4th Street, the historic Hotel Beale that Devine's parents bought in 1906 stares vacantly at the road that carries one name on the signpost across the street -- Route 66.

Its owners, Tedi Ronchetti and her sons, closed it 10 years ago. They hope a revival of historic downtown will make reopening it financially feasible.

"When somebody's really popular, everybody wants to jump on the bandwagon, but now that he's deceased, well, now it's like, 'Oh, sorry. You're gone now,' " Ronchetti said of the name change.

Route 66 opened in 1926 and wasn't even fully paved until 1937. It has had several names -- Gold Trail West, Front Street and National Highway, Ronchetti said. Make it Route 66, but memorialize the other names too, she said.

Devine was one of those actors you don't know you knew. Roy Rogers' horse, Trigger, got bigger billing. Devine appeared in more than 400 films, including John Ford's "Stagecoach."

Devine acquired his raspy trademark voice in Kingman when he fell in the Hotel Beale at age 5. He fell on a stick horse or a curtain rod, depending on who tells the tale. It's a great story, but not the one visitors are looking for when they take Route 66 through Kingman, Henderson said.

"It's marketing," said Ronchetti's son, Zell Henderson, 53. "With that Hoover Dam bypass road you guys are building up there, more tourism for us is on the horizon."

And at 100 miles south of the Las Vegas Valley and just west of the Grand Canyon, Kingman is a natural tourist stop.

"We have a line in the water, but we never had a hook or any bait," Henderson said."Now we're talking about getting a hook."