The most innocuous bits of vehicle debris help out with putting a date range to pavement on abandoned sections of Route 66.

Embedded in the pavement surface of a section outside Hackberry, Arizona, this metal part tag is from a Dexter axle that was used on an Airstream trailer. Contacting Dexter Axle – the company still exists – I learned this part tag came from a axle in the first two production years of the company. That places the time range between 1960 to 1962.

While the axle tag could have fallen off the Airstream at any year after production, the tag pins down the pavement as no older than 1960.