Historic Sites in Flagstaff AZ — Railroad Town, Route 66 & Beyond

The best historic site in Flagstaff by a significant margin. The mansion at 409 W. Riordan Road was built in 1904 for brothers Michael and Timothy Riordan, who ran the Arizona Lumber and Timber Company — which at its peak was one of the largest lumber operations in the Southwest. The building is a duplex: two mirror-image homes connected by a common room, built in the American Arts and Crafts style at a time when the movement was at its height.

The Building Itself

The architecture is genuinely unusual. The exterior combines log-slab siding (slabs of ponderosa pine still in their natural bark), volcanic-stone pillars quarried from the local area, and hand-crafted stonework. Inside, the 13,000 square feet are filled with original furnishings — Tiffany light fixtures, handmade furniture, Arts and Crafts textiles, and a library that has barely changed since Timothy Riordan's death in 1967. The Riordans were wealthy but not ostentatious in the Eastern sense — the building reads as ambitious and crafted rather than merely expensive. It looks like it belongs here in a way that mansion architecture usually doesn't.

Tour Information

Access to the interior is by guided tour only, which is the right call — the furnishings are original and the context matters. Tours run hourly from 9 AM to 4 PM (last tour at 4 PM), approximately 45 minutes each. Admission: $12 adults, $7 youth (7-13), free under 7. The grounds are free to walk. Summer weekend tours fill up; book ahead at arizonastateparks.gov or call 928-779-4395. The mansion is closed on certain state holidays — verify before visiting. The short walk through the grounds before or after the tour is worth doing in any season.

The downtown commercial district along Route 66 (Santa Fe Avenue) and the cross streets between Leroux and San Francisco is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The designation is deserved. The sandstone-brick commercial buildings from the 1910s through 1930s are largely intact — not restored in a Disney-fied way, but actually used and occupied by businesses that fit the scale and character of the original buildings.

Heritage Square and the 1926 Train Depot

Heritage Square on Aspen Avenue sits across from the 1926 Santa Fe Railway depot — a Tudor Revival-style building in red brick that remains one of the most handsome small-city railroad stations in the Southwest. Amtrak's Southwest Chief still stops here daily (once in each direction). The depot now houses the Flagstaff Visitor Center, which is free to enter and has exhibits on railroad history, Route 66, and Flagstaff's commercial development. Pick up the free walking tour map here — it covers 25+ historic landmarks in the downtown core. The map turns a 20-minute walk into a 90-minute experience.

Self-Guided Walking Tour

Starting from the depot, walk west on Route 66. Within 6 blocks you'll pass: the 1897 Babbitt Brothers Building (still operating as a commercial block), the 1917 Orpheum Theater (Flagstaff's main music venue, with its original marquee), the 1888 Bank Hotel (now apartments), and a run of neon motel signs that photograph particularly well at dusk. Turn north on Leroux Street for the Coconino Center for the Arts (1930s building, free gallery). The whole circuit takes 45-75 minutes at a walking pace, longer if you stop into shops. External link: flagstaff.com historic downtown guide has downloadable walking tour PDFs.

The Hotel Monte Vista at 100 N. San Francisco Street opened in 1927 and hasn't stopped operating since. It's the most atmospheric lodging option on Route 66 in Flagstaff — not the most comfortable, but the most interesting. The building is Art Deco, seven floors, with a ground-floor bar and restaurant that look exactly as they should for a 1927 motor hotel on the Mother Road.

The History

The Monte Vista was built as a community investment — local citizens subscribed $200,000 in bonds to finance it, and the naming contest for the hotel drew more than 2,000 entries. It operated as a first-class hotel through the 1930s and 1940s, drawing Hollywood figures traveling between Los Angeles and Albuquerque on Route 66. Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Spencer Tracy all stayed here in the 1940s and 1950s; their rooms are now named after them. Jane Russell, Bob Hope, and Bing Crosby also have documented stays. By the 1970s and 1980s the hotel declined with Route 66 itself; it was restored in the 1990s and operates today as a boutique hotel with 50 rooms.

The Ghost Stories

The Monte Vista has been publicly marketing its haunted reputation since at least the 1980s. The specifics are more interesting than generic ghost-hotel claims: Room 305 is said to be haunted by a couple who checked in and were never seen checking out (their bodies were reportedly found in the canyon nearby months later — the details get murky in the retelling). A bellboy named "Randy" is said to appear in hallways late at night. Room 306 allegedly hosts the spirit of a former resident. The hotel's bar, called the Monte Vista Lounge, is said to be active at 2 AM. Whether or not any of this is credible, the building has the atmosphere to support the stories — worn carpets, quirky room configurations, and the general feeling that many things happened here over 100 years. The bar is worth stopping into regardless of your position on ghosts.

Route 66 passes through Flagstaff as Santa Fe Avenue, and the 1.5-mile stretch through the historic downtown is one of the most intact segments of the original route anywhere in the country. Unlike many Route 66 towns where the highway bypassed the downtown or the commercial strip became derelict, Flagstaff's Route 66 alignment runs directly through a functioning, occupied commercial district.

What Makes This Stretch Distinctive

The original Route 66 designation came in 1926, but Flagstaff had been on the principal east-west road since the 1910s. The commercial buildings along the route were built with automobile travelers in mind — motor courts, service stations, diners, and hotels optimized for the drive-through trade. Many survive. The Motor Hotel at 223 S. Route 66 (now apartments) was a 1930s auto court. The Flagstaff Motor Hotel sign on Butler Avenue is a surviving example of the pre-Interstate neon era. The route through downtown still aligns with the original concrete pavement in places.

The Neon Signs at Dusk

The surviving Route 66 neon signs are best seen at dusk when they glow against a darkening sky. The Museum Club bar sign on East Route 66 (a 1936 roadhouse built inside a taxidermy museum — yes, really) is one of the most photographed Route 66 signs in Arizona. The Weatherford Hotel sign (a building dating to 1900), the Du Beau International Hostel sign, and the Flamingo Motor Hotel sign all photograph well in the evening light. The Arizona Route 66 Association maintains a resource site with historical documentation of the Arizona alignment.

Lowell Observatory sits on Mars Hill, a short drive from downtown, and has been operating as a research institution since 1894 — making it one of the oldest observatories in the American West. Percival Lowell founded it specifically to study Mars (he was convinced it harbored intelligent life — he was wrong, but the science that followed was legitimate). The discovery that matters most came in 1930, when 24-year-old astronomer Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto while comparing photographic plates at the observatory's Pluto telescope. The original blink comparator Tombaugh used is still on site.

Visiting the Observatory

The daytime visitor experience covers the historic buildings, the Pluto discovery story through exhibits and the original instruments, and the Steele Visitor Center's broader exhibits on planetary science. The evening programs (from around 5:30 PM) add telescope access — you can look through the historic 24-inch Clark Refractor that has been in operation since 1896. Evening admission: $22 adults, $14 youth. Daytime admission is similar. Open daily 10 AM to 10 PM. Book evening programs ahead at lowell.edu — they sell out on weekends from May through October.

The observatory's position — on a hill above downtown, surrounded by ponderosa pines, with the dome visible from much of central Flagstaff — is itself historically interesting. Lowell chose Mars Hill because the altitude (6,900 feet) provided cleaner seeing conditions than lower sites, and the distance from city lights mattered even in 1894. The observatory's continued operation and the city's International Dark Sky designation are directly connected.

Without the railroad, Flagstaff doesn't exist in its current form. The Atlantic and Pacific Railroad (later merged into the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe) reached the site in 1882, and the town incorporated the following year. The railroad brought workers, supplies, and a market for the ponderosa pine lumber that covered the surrounding mountains. Every significant building in historic downtown Flagstaff — the Riordan Mansion, the Monte Vista Hotel, the commercial blocks — was built on money that came directly or indirectly from the railroad and the lumber economy it enabled.

The BNSF Railway (successor to the Santa Fe) still runs through downtown Flagstaff on the same transcontinental line, and an average of 80+ freight trains pass through daily. The train depot remains active as an Amtrak station — the Southwest Chief stops in both directions, connecting Chicago to Los Angeles via Flagstaff, Albuquerque, and Kansas City. Watching a freight train thunder through downtown on the original mainline is one of the more viscerally historical experiences in the city. The best viewing spot is the platform at the Visitor Center, where you can stand within 20 feet of a train doing 40 mph through the center of an American city in 2026.

For a deeper dive into Flagstaff's built history, see our downtown shopping guide — many of the buildings you'll browse have direct historic significance. Our GPS audio tours also cover the downtown historic district with narration while you walk.