Remnant of a sign from Ella's Frontier, Route 66, Joseph City, AZ.

Frederick "San Diego" Rawson (the author of "Arizona Speaks", 1947) came to Joseph City, Arizona in 1927. He opened a museum, and after running low on funds sufficient to operate it, closed it and sold off his displays. Rawson then bought a log cabin west of town, and opened a roadside business alternatively known as "La Frontera", "Frontier Days" and "San Diego's Old Frontier". Unlike other "trading posts' found along Route 66, Rawson employed Navajo weavers and silversmiths to stock his store. In his eighties, Rawson sold the Old Frontier to Ramon Hubbell in 1947. Around 1950, the Old Frontier became the property of Ray Meany and his bride Ella Blackwell. Meany also owned another Route 66 business "Hopi House" 11 miles west of Winslow. When Blackwell and Meany divorced in 1955, Meany kept Hopi House, and Blackwell got the Old Frontier. Blackell operated the business from 1955 for nearly thirty years. Ella's Frontier would up on an abandoned dead end of Route 66 when I-40 bypassed Jos