For over 13,000 years, the Painted Desert has served as a natural travel corridor near this location, offering a direct route between the eastern and western United States by skirting the Rocky Mountains and other adverse terrain. Ice Age hunters, Spanish explorers, military and railroad expeditions, and automobile drivers all favored this path of least resistance. Lt. Amiel Whipple, for whom this point is named, passed this way in 1853 while surveying a railroad route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Since then, this corridor has been part of the Beale Wagon Road, established in 1857, the Overland Mail/Star Route in 1876, a transcontinental railroad in 1883 with sections still in operation, the National Old Trails Highway in 1912, Route 66 in 1926, and Interstate 40 in 1958.