(All photos are stock images from various sources)
I have really enjoyed reminiscing about my days in Southwest over the past couple of months. In previous posts I have spent a lot of time talking about my days in California, New Mexico and to some extent Texas. I kinda feel bad that I have ignored the great state of Arizona though. I often referred to it as 'the great land in between' the states that I once called home. I may not have lived there, but I sure spent a lifetime traveling down the famous Route 66 and later Interstate 40 through Arizona. I have great memories of looking out the window, eating a roadside diners and stopping at an endless collection of tourist traps as my family traveled from point to point on summer vacations.
Today I want to talk about one of those numerous tourists traps, the Fort Courage Trading Post in Houck, Arizona. If you are old enough, you may remember the 60's western comedy sitcom F Troop that aired on ABC from 1965 to 1966 starring Larry Storch, Ken Berry and Forrest Tucker. The location of that sitcom was the fictional western military installation known as Fort Courage. As you can imagine the Fort Courage Trading Post was built in the early 1970s to try and cash in on the popularity of the show as families traveled into the region to see how wild the west really was,
During the 1970s Fort Courage enjoyed a lot of success as families traveled to California from the east. The replica of an 1860 army fort was home to a gas station, an Ortega's Tacos restaurant, a Pancake House restaurant, and several gift shops that sold cowboy and Native American trinkets. The fort itself served as a pseudo museum of what life may have been like back in a pop culture version of the wild west.
As you can imagine a tourist location based solely on a 60s sitcom would be destined to an eventual demise and Fort Courage suffered that eventual fate, As time passed, F Troop went from prime time, to syndication, then eventually obscurity. The once prosperous tourist destination went from a must see to must drive on past during the 80s in 90s.
Families driving down Interstate 40 in the 1990s probably asked, "What the heck is F Troop?" as they raced on down the highway.
Today the location is abandoned. There was a recent attempt to sell it, then there was a fire that burned down many of the buildings. Sadly Fort Courage will soon just be a memory as it wastes away under the Arizona sun.
No comments:
Post a Comment