With the coming of the railroad, William's began its long history of prosperity and poverty followed by more prosperity, gradually becoming an important lumbering and railroad town, which is today known as the "Gateway to the Grand Canyon".
A double peaked lava cone formation, Bill Williams Mountain appears on the map made for the Sitgreaves' survey by Richard H. Kern in 1851. In Arizona during the year 1837, Antoine Leroux, a famous guide, met the rugged "mountain man" after whom the mountain is named. At that time William's was in Arizona alone on the river which now bears his name. He had traveled through the Mogollon and Little Colorado River region, living off the land and trapping beaver. Leroux reports that Williams headed north across the Colorado River, thus completing his only known visit to what is now Arizona.
William Sherely Williams served as an itinerant preacher for nine years, followed by twelve on the frontier and an additional seven as a plains man and mountain man, according to Zebulon Pike, who knew him. Pike described Williams as a hunter and trapper who was tall, gaunt, redheaded, and said he was fairly well educated. While transporting baggage for the Fremont expedition, Williams was killed by Ute Indians in 1849. Two years later Kern used information given by Antoine Leroux in placing the name of Bill Williams on a Mountain and river in Arizona.
Williams, Arizona would go down in history as being the last town to have its section of Route 66 bypassed. The original plan was to have the last section of the famous highway bypassed somewhere in Texas, but lawsuits that had been filed kept the last section of Interstate 40 from being built around Williams. After settlements called for the state to build three exits for the town, the suits were dropped and I-40 was built. In 1984, Interstate 40 was opened around the town and newspapers the next day reported the essential end of the famous US 66. The following year, Route 66 was decommissioned.
Today, Williams Main Street is one the best preserved stretches of the Route 66 in America. Walk Main Street and you’ll find vintage neon on buildings that are preserved to their original character, lots of fun shops with Route 66 merchandise, restaurants that have the character of the Route 66 heyday of the 50’s, coffee shops, internet cafes, and fine dining. Cowboys swagger through downtown and a gunfight breaks out every night right in the middle of Route 66 April through October.
