Final Thoughts On U.S. Highway 666

I have driven the entire length of the former Route 666, but not all at the same time. I have driven various portions of it at different times. I never felt any uneasiness about it, it was just another highway to me. The most beautiful portion of it is a 93 mile stretch between Morenci and Alpine, Arizona. This stretch has about 450 curves on it. It is a narrow, crooked mountain road and for most of this distance, drivers cannot go more than 30 or 40 miles per hour because the highway is so crooked. The average elevation in this area is over 8,000 feet above sea level, with a high point of 9,224 feet. The highest town in Arizona is on this stretch of highway. It is Hannagan Meadow at 9,092 feet.
  The most notorious section of the highway is the stretch between Gallup, New Mexico and the Colorado border 16 miles north of Shiprock. This stretch of highway runs through the eastern part of the Navajo Indian Reservation. The landscape is desert with alot of red sand. In some places, at higher elevations, there is a decent grass cover.  In other places, there is very little vegetation. It is basically clumps of desert grass clinging tenuously to life in the desert sands, accentuated by red rock buttes and mesas silhouetted by the brooding Chuska Mountains to the west of the highway. This landscape is perfect for legends to form.
  I have found it to be a little strange that all of the stories and  the unexplained disappearances involve the stretch between Gallup and the Colorado border. I have never found any evidence of unusual happenings on any other stretch of the infamous highway.
  The Gallup to Shiprock stretch is the busiest portion of the entire highway and the state of New Mexico is currently in the process of making it a 4 lane, divided highway for the whole 93 mile distance. It was a narrow, poorly designed road for the huge amount of traffic that it carried all these years.
  I have never experienced anything unusual on Route 666, and I have driven the Gallup to Colorado stretch several times and nothing unusual happened and I did not have an overwhelming sense of fear while I was driving that stretch of road.
  It also seems a little strange that the stories have abated since the highway was renumbered as U.S. Highway 491. There are probably strange things still happening on the road there, but they don't get media coverage because the highway no longer has the 666 appellation attached to it.