Lt. Edward Fitzgerald Beale, a U.S. Navy officer in the service of the U.S.
Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, was ordered by the U.S. War Department
to build a federal wagon road across the 35th Parallel. His secondary orders
were to test the feasibility of the use of camels as pack animals in the south-western
desert. Beale travelled through the present day Kingman in 1857 surveying the
road and in 1859 to build the road. The road became part of Highway 66 and Interstate
Highway 40. Remnants of the wagon road can still be seen in White Cliffs Canyon
in Kingman.
Kingman, Arizona, was founded in 1882, when
