Las Vegas to Grand Canyon Village

You're heading from Las Vegas to Grand Canyon Village — about 280 miles and a little over four hours of driving.

You're passing through Railroad Pass, a natural gap between the River Mountains to the north and the McCullough Range to the south.

This stretch of road you're on carries the designation Purple Heart Highway, named in honor of combat-wounded veterans.

Boulder City was built from scratch in 1931 as a federal reservation to house the thousands of workers constructing Hoover Dam. The U.S.

Before the Mike O'Callaghan–Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge opened in 2010, every vehicle on US-93 had to descend into Black Canyon on a road carved directly into the cliff…

You crossed the highest concrete arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere back near Hoover Dam, but here's what most people don't know about its construction.

You're near Willow Beach, one of the few access points to the Colorado River directly downstream of Hoover Dam.

You're driving along the western arm of Lake Mead, and if you can catch a glimpse of the water, notice the stark white band on the surrounding rock faces.

The turnoff near here leads to Temple Bar, one of Lake Mead's most isolated access points.

You're passing through White Hills, named for a short-lived silver mining district that boomed in 1892 and collapsed within a few years.

Dolan Springs is one of dozens of unincorporated communities scattered across northwestern Arizona where many residents live entirely off the grid — no municipal water,…

You're crossing Golden Valley, a basin squeezed between the Cerbat Mountains to the west and the Hualapai Mountains to the south.

The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway didn't just pass through Kingman — it created it.

You're passing through Kingman, where Andy Devine grew up.

Those peaks rising south of I-40 are the Hualapai Mountains, a sky island that climbs from roughly 3,300 feet at the desert floor to 8,417 feet at Hualapai Peak.

You're driving through one of the most dramatic elevation transitions in the American West right now.

Right about here, you're crossing one of the most significant geological boundaries in North America.

In 1987, a barber in this small town changed American highway preservation forever.

This stretch of I-40 between Ash Fork and Williams sits in what ecologists call the juniper-grassland transition zone, roughly five thousand to six thousand feet in…

Ash Fork has shipped more flagstone than any town in the country.

Williams was the last town on Route 66 to be bypassed by Interstate 40, holding out until October 1984.

Bill Williams Mountain, the prominent peak south of town, is named for one of the most eccentric figures in frontier history.

The Grand Canyon Railway began service in 1901, meaning tourists reached the South Rim by train nearly three decades before most Americans owned cars.

The pale roadcuts you can see along the highway here expose Kaibab Limestone, the exact same rock layer that forms the rim of the Grand Canyon.

This stretch of Highway 64 crosses the Coconino Plateau, one of the largest open grasslands in northern Arizona.

Valle is home to one of the more unexpected roadside attractions in Arizona — a private outdoor collection of roughly thirty military and civilian aircraft parked in the…

This stretch of Highway 64 crosses the Coconino Plateau, one of the largest grazing regions in northern Arizona.

The Ponderosa pines surrounding you right now are the most widely distributed pine species in North America, ranging from British Columbia to Mexico.

That shallow dry lake bed you may notice alongside the highway sits inside a solution sinkhole, a depression formed when slightly acidic rainwater dissolved the Kaibab…