A Family Owned and Operated Small Business:
When you shop at Angel & Vilma Delgadillo's Original Route 66 Gift Shop you are supporting a family owned and operated small business. Not only are we the very first little store to carry Route 66 themed items, we are still a very small family-run business. Angel and Vilma still own the store and are involved in the business but their daughters, Mirna and Clarissa, and son-in-law, Mauricio manage the store. If you come to the store, you can see how really small we are! If you are considering ordering online, please know that because we are a small business, you will be getting personal service by our staff so if you have any questions, just ask. We have real people here to help you!
Our Made in USA Mission:
Our online store consists entirely of made in the U.S.A. products. We know how hard it is to find products made in the United States so we are trying to do our part to give our customers an easy place to shop online for Made in the U.S.A. Route 66 gifts.
In our store in Seligman, we serve a clientele from all over the world. For years we have heard our international customers ask for made in the U.S.A. products. They have traveled very far to come to the United States to visit us and our Route 66 small-town culture. They want to take back souvenirs that are actually from here. It made sense to us! So we have been making a concerted effort to find more and more USA made products for our gift shop. If we can encourage our vendors to provide us with made in the USA products and our vendors encourage their manufacturers that there is a market for more made in the USA products, we can accomplish change!
No, we do NOT sell burgers! (The Snow Cap Connection):
At one point in time brothers, Juan Delgadillo, Joe Delgadillo, and Angel Delgadillo all owned businesses right next to each other: a burger joint, a gas station, and a barber shop respectively. Therefore, it is not uncommon for people to confuse Delgadillo's Snow Cap (the burger joint) with us, Delgadillo's Route 66 Gift Shop (the barber shop). Joe sold his business when he retired so the business in between us and the Snow Cap is no longer a Delgadillo business. As for the world famous Snow Cap, it is still run by the Juan Delgadillo family, primarily his son John. We are separate businesses but we love and support the Snow Cap so here is a little history about them:
Juan Delgadillo built the now-famous Snow Cap Drive-In restaurant in 1953 out of scrap lumber that he collected while working for the Santa Fe Railroad. After Dairy Queen declined his franchise proposition, Juan signed up with the Snow Cap Drive-In chain based out of Prescott.
For years and years, during the prosperous busy days of Route 66 and the lean years after Seligman was by-passed by Interstate 40, Juan kept the Snow Cap open every day with the help of his dedicated wife, Mary. Juan became known for his particular sense of humor, playing little tricks on his customers which helped him keep his sanity working 7 days a week to support his family.
In 1987, Juan and his brother, Angel, started a small group called the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona. The group’s mission was to bring the defunct Route 66 back as a historic highway and encourage people to bring their business back to the dying towns along the Route. Because of the their incredible success, and because the Snow Cap was the epitome of the old roadside diners for which people were so nostalgic, Juan and Snow Cap became famous!
In 1997, the Snow Cap chain folded and, as the last Snow Cap in operation, Juan made arrangements to keep the name as his own. The now one and only, and one of a kind, Snow Cap continues the unique traditions of silliness that Juan started over 60 years ago. Juan, Mary, and Robert Delgadillo’s memories live on as Juan’s children and grandchildren continue his legacy of serving classic road food with a side of wacky antics.
Our Visitor’s Center Attitude:
When you come into our store in Seligman, Arizona please know that you are not just coming to a store. We are not only a historic landmark where the rebirth of Route 66 started, but we are also the Visitor’s Center for our area. We are happy to answer questions you have about Route 66, The Grand Canyon, Supai, The Skywalk, or history on Seligman itself. Between all of us here on our staff, we like to think we know pretty much everything!
Our Celebrities:
Besides being visited by John Lasseter and the crew of Pixar (see our links page) we have also been visited by many other famous people from around the world. When Mirna was working here years ago with her parents, she was shocked to see American comedian Jerry Seinfeld come into the shop! Our French customers enjoy seeing our picture of Angel and Mirna posing with French singer Johnny Hallyday who visited while doing a Route 66 trip to commerate his 66th birthday. Scottish comedian and actor Billy Connolly came and interviewed Angel for his entertaining 4 part television series on Route 66. The very famous Japanese pop star Yamapi visited Angel and featured him on his Route 66 program (see our youtube channel for clips from that show). Many Americans know our store from seeing it on the program Rick's Restoration featuring the restoration of Angel's old Wurlizter juke box. Tommy Lee of Motley Crew fame has been to our store as well as Bartel Van Riet from Belgium, and quite a few more famous Japanese musicians, actors, comedians, and wrestlers including: Nakamura Masatoshi (twice), Kensuke Sasaki and his wife Akira Hokuto, Kakei Toshio, Kato Noriko, Tabe Mikako (twice), Fuse Hiroshi, High Heeled Momoko, Yamada Maria, and Henmi Emiri.
Our Many Names and Addresses:
It is not our goal to purposefully confuse anyone but alas, we are very confusing. Due to our colorful history and many changes we have experienced, we go by many different names: Angel & Vilma's Route 66 Visitor's Center and Memorabilia, Delgadillo's Route 66 Gift Shop, Angel's Barber Shop, Delgadillo Pool Hall and Barber Shop, The Original Route 66 Gift Shop - and many other similar configurations. Yes, it's all us. And to confuse the matter further, the well-known Route 66 restaurant, Delgadillo's Snow Cap, is just two doors down and run by a different faction of the family.
And our address.... The addresses on Route 66 have changed over the years and many current GPS systems do not know where we are. Our current address is 22265 W Historic Route 66 Seligman, Arizona 86337, but don't rely on any mapping system to know that. Also, for the many years when Route 66 didn't exist anymore, our address was 217 E Chino St Seligman, Arizona 86337. But the wonderful thing about Seligman is that it is so small all you have to do is drive into town and look for us. Just like they did it in the olden days!
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