Route 66 enters the Hualapai Reservation about three miles west of Grand Canyon Caverns and stays on it for some sixteen miles, through the tribal capital at Peach Springs, to a point just east of Truxton. The reservation was created by an executive order of President Chester A. Arthur on 4 January 1883, after General Orlando Willcox had set the land aside by a military order of 8 July 1881. It runs for about 108 miles along the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River. Its creation followed the worst years in Hualapai history. Beale's wagon road of 1857, the Prescott gold rush of 1863 and William Hardy's toll road of 1864 brought steady traffic through Hualapai country, and the killing of the leader Wauba Yuma by settlers at Beale Springs in 1866 renewed a war that ran until the last bands surrendered around 1869 and 1870.
In 1874 the Army forced hundreds of Hualapai onto the Colorado River Indian Reservation at La Paz, near present Ehrenberg. A Kingman historical marker dates the march to 21 April 1874. The march took about two weeks; children, the elderly and the sick died on the way, and more died of disease and hunger during a year of internment. In 1875 the survivors escaped and walked home to find much of their land taken by settlers.
Each April the tribe holds the La Paz Trail of Tears Run, a run of almost 200 miles back to Peach Springs that commemorates the march.
Getting there
35.5440, -113.2820
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
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