Arrowhead Trail (1914-1924)
Clark County, Clark County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Arrowhead Trail (1914 1924). Las Vegas promoters claimed to be the originators of this all-weather route between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. From the beginning, the Arrowhead Trail was a “grass roots” effort, including promotion by various chambers of commerce and volunteer construction by local citizens. However, it was Charles H. Bigelow, from Los Angeles, who gave the trail publicity. Between 1915 & 1916, he drove the entire route many times in the twin-six Packard he named “Cactus Kate.”The trail, which extends near here, was built in 1915 and completed the section between St. Thomas and Las Vegas. In its day it denoted a milestone of progress.
Erected by Elbert B. Edwards
The Story
The Arrowhead Trail was an all-weather auto route linking Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, championed by Las Vegas boosters who claimed to have originated it. It was a grassroots effort—promoted by chambers of commerce and built by volunteer labor—that gained wide fame when Los Angeles's Charles H. Bigelow drove the route repeatedly in 1915–1916 in his twin-six Packard, "Cactus Kate." The section near here, completed in 1915 between St. Thomas and Las Vegas, marked a real milestone in early automobile travel.
Why it matters
The Arrowhead Trail belongs to the dawn of American car culture, when named highways stitched the West together and turned isolated desert towns into stops on a national road.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the years just before and after the First World War, the automobile was changing from a rich man's novelty into something ordinary families dreamed of owning. But a car was only as good as the road under it, and in the desert Southwest there were almost no roads worth the name — just wagon ruts, dry washes, and stretches of sand that could swallow a wheel to the axle. Getting from Southern California to the interior meant gambling on the weather and your own nerve.
The stretch of Nevada around here was some of the emptiest country in the nation, a land of heat, distance, and scarce water. The towns that did exist were small and hungry for a reason to grow. When the idea took hold that a dependable, all-weather motor route could be pushed through from Los Angeles all the way to Salt Lake City, it wasn't a government project handed down from above. It was something local people decided to build for themselves.
This was the era of the "named highway" — before numbered federal routes, boosters christened their roads with romantic titles and painted markers on rocks and fence posts to guide drivers along. The Arrowhead Trail was one of these hopeful, hand-made highways, stitched together stretch by stretch across the desert.
People & events
The Arrowhead Trail was, from the start, a grassroots effort. Chambers of commerce talked it up, and ordinary citizens turned out with their own tools and sweat to grade and clear the roadbed. Las Vegas promoters, in particular, liked to claim they had originated the whole idea of this route between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City — a proud boast from a town still finding its feet.
But a road needs more than volunteers with shovels; it needs someone to make the wider world believe in it. That man was Charles H. Bigelow of Los Angeles. In 1915 and 1916 he drove the full length of the route again and again in a twelve-cylinder Packard he affectionately named "Cactus Kate." Every trip was a piece of living advertisement, proof that the desert crossing could actually be made by automobile.
The work paid off in real miles of finished road. In 1915 the section between St. Thomas and Las Vegas was completed, one link in the longer chain, and the route ran near this very spot. To the people who built it, it wasn't just a road — it was, as they put it, a milestone of progress, a sign that their corner of the desert was joining the modern age.
Its place in the American story
The Arrowhead Trail belongs to a pivotal chapter in the American story: the moment the country decided it would be a nation of drivers. Before the numbered U.S. highways and long before the interstates, it was efforts like this one — local, volunteer, stubbornly optimistic — that first tied distant regions together by automobile.
These named trails did something quietly revolutionary. They turned isolated desert settlements into stops along a through-route, giving lonely towns a claim on the traffic, commerce, and travelers passing between great cities. A place that had been merely remote could suddenly become a place on the way to somewhere.
The grassroots spirit here matters too. The Arrowhead Trail was built by people who couldn't wait for far-off authorities to remember they existed, so they graded the road themselves and sent a man in a Packard to tell the world. That blend of local boosterism and do-it-yourself determination helped lay the groundwork for the national road system that would follow, and for the car culture that reshaped the American West.
If you visit
Stand here and let the scale of the country sink in. The thing to feel at this marker isn't a grand monument — it's the emptiness itself, the same vast, sun-struck desert that early drivers had to cross with no guarantee of gas, water, or a road that would still be there after a storm. Picture a heavy open Packard grinding through it, mile after mile.
Look toward the horizon and imagine the route running near this spot, hand-built by volunteers a little over a century ago. Where you might cover the distance in air-conditioned comfort in an afternoon, they measured the same ground in days, dust, and courage.
This is a natural stop for anyone tracing the roots of the American road trip. Pair it with a slow look at the landscape and a little imagination about "Cactus Kate" rolling through, and a plain patch of desert becomes the birthplace of a journey millions of travelers now take for granted.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Charles H. Bigelow
Themes & tags
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