Chapter 11 — Winslow, Arizona, and the Corner That Eagles Made Famous

For a long time, Winslow, Arizona, was just another small town on the edge of the high desert, surviving on Route 66 traffic and not much else. The population peaked somewhere around 8,000 in the mid-twentieth century and then declined steadily as the interstate took traffic away and the economy of the Colorado Plateau shifted.

Then, in 1972, the Eagles released Take It Easy, with the opening line about standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona. It was a song about nothing in particular — or rather, about everything at once: a hitchhiker, a girl in a flatbed Ford, a general feeling of restless contentment. Glenn Frey, who wrote the song with Jackson Browne, had been driving through the Southwest and stopped in Winslow long enough to get the line lodged in his head.

The song became one of the most played American rock songs of the decade. And people started stopping in Winslow. Not many at first. Then more. Then a lot.

The town eventually built an actual brick corner — Standin’ on the Corner Park — with a mural and a bronze statue of a hitchhiker and a flatbed truck with a painted girl peering over the tailgate. It is one of the more overtly commercial pieces of roadside nostalgia on Route 66, and also one of the most genuinely moving, because the song actually is good and Winslow actually is exactly what it sounds like.

Every summer, people stand on that corner and feel the song happen to them in real time. A guitar lick from 1972 keeps a small Arizona town alive. The road provides, sometimes in the most unexpected ways.

We are offering licences for ROUTE 66® Beer in specific territories. An invitation to others to become part of this story. To carry a piece of the road with them and to contribute to the story. We will share a percentage of royalties with Route 66 associations to keep the story alive.

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