This 98-year-old is the reason Route 66 is still on the map

When Interstate 40 bypassed Seligman, Arizona in 1978, it did what interstate highways had done to dozens of small American towns before it: cut off the traffic that kept local businesses running. Route 66, once the primary route across the American Southwest, became a road tourists no longer needed to take, and Seligman’s economy went with it.

Angel V. Delgadillo Jr. had spent his whole life in that town. Born there on April 19, 1927, to a Mexican-American family whose parents had come from Jalisco and Aguascalientes, Mexico, in 1917, he grew up watching his father run a barbershop serving Mexican and Native American residents during the town’s segregated era. Angel graduated from Seligman High School in 1947, trained at the American Pacific Barber College in Pasadena, California, apprenticed in Williams, Arizona, and returned in 1950 to open his own barbershop in his father’s former pool hall on Route 66, moving it to a new location on the highway’s updated alignment in 1972.

Once the interstate diverted traffic away in 1978, Delgadillo, according to the BBC, became one of the loudest voices arguing that Route 66 was worth saving rather than abandoning. That argument turned into action in 1987, when he helped establish the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona, an organisation dedicated to preserving and promoting the surviving sections of the road.

The association’s efforts persuaded Arizona to officially designate the surviving stretches of Route 66 as a historic route, a recognition that gave the road, and the towns along it, a reason for travellers to return. The Arizona model spread from there, with similar associations forming in other Route 66 states and, in time, in other countries as well.

Delgadillo’s own barbershop turned into a stop on the route itself, drawing travellers from the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia who wanted to hear him describe the highway’s history first-hand. That reputation eventually reached Hollywood: while researching Pixar’s 2006 film Cars, director John Lasseter visited Seligman and spent time with Delgadillo. Pixar has never confirmed a single real-life template for the film’s Radiator Springs, but Seligman is widely regarded as a key influence, and Delgadillo’s campaign is often credited with shaping the film’s central theme about small towns bypassed by progress.

At 98, Delgadillo continues to meet visitors who travel specifically to see him, carrying nicknames such as the ‘Guardian Angel of Route 66’ and the ‘Father of the Mother Road’. Route 66 now attracts millions of visitors each year, a revival that traces back directly to one barber’s decision not to let his town disappear.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/by Zeddammer