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Williams sits at around 6,700 feet above sea level on the Colorado Plateau, a small Arizona town that has spent well over a century defining itself almost entirely by what lies to its north. The South Rim of the Grand Canyon is roughly 60 miles up the road, and that proximity shapes everything here, from the timber-framed storefronts along Route 66 to the restored 1908 railway depot that sends the Grand Canyon Railway north each morning. Williams was, in 1984, the last town on the old Route 66 to be bypassed by Interstate 40, a fact locals wear with a certain pride, and the original alignment of the Mother Road still runs through the centre of town, lined with diners, motels, and trading posts that have changed remarkably little in spirit since the mid-twentieth century.

For most visitors, Williams functions as a base rather than a destination in its own right, and there is nothing wrong with that. The town has a genuine frontier-era character, cool summers by Arizona standards, and cold, sometimes snowy winters that give the ponderosa pine forests surrounding it a quality quite different from the desert landscapes most people associate with the state. At elevation, the air is noticeably thinner and sharper than in Phoenix or Tucson, and the light on the plateau in the late afternoon has a particular quality that photographers tend to notice immediately.