One Mile, Three Rounds

The Southside bars, and the stops between them

About a mile of Flagstaff's Southside in roughly two hours: three bar stops where you settle in with a drink, and the story stops between them where your guide earns the tour its name.

The white brick Mother Road Brewing Co. building and its patio on Mikes Pike in Southside Flagstaff

01 · Round One · Meeting Point

Mother Road Brewing Company

7 S Mikes Pike, Flagstaff, AZ 86001

Round one. The crawl starts where the Southside does: a few steps south of the tracks.

Mother Road has brewed on Mikes Pike since 2011, inside a 1920s-era laundry building a short walk from the rails that built this town. We meet outside the front door about 15 minutes before start time, then settle in for the first round while your guide sets the scene: the railroad that arrived in 1882, the boomtown that grew up beside it, and why the respectable side of Flagstaff preferred not to look south.

The street itself is a story. Mikes Pike carried Route 66 through town from 1926 to 1934, before the highway moved north of the tracks, and it is named for the Riordan brothers whose lumber mill drove the town. You will hear what the mill hands did with their pay a block from here.

A Freaky Foot Tours group on a dark Flagstaff sidewalk at night with the train depot lights in view

02 · Story Stop

The Tracks

The line that split the town in two, and the brakeman who never clocked out.

The Atlantic and Pacific Railroad reached Flagstaff on August 1, 1882, and the saloons, boarding houses and gambling rooms that served the crews went up on this side of the rails. Dozens of freight trains still roll through every day and night. Railroad men still tell of a brakeman named Leo Bart and a lantern that moves along the rails on the right kind of night.

What your guide tells you here is one of the oldest stories in Flagstaff. The rest of it, you hear on the crawl.

A Freaky Foot Tours guide talking with guests on a Southside Flagstaff sidewalk under a monsoon sky, old stone storefronts behind them

03 · Story Stop

The Restricted District

For decades these blocks were Flagstaff's red-light district, and the paper trail is remarkable.

South of the tracks, around Mikes Pike, South San Francisco Street and South Beaver Street, the town ran what the newspapers politely called the restricted district. Saloons paid a quarterly fee, the houses paid monthly, and in 1895 the reformers answered with Ordinance Ten, a ban on everything from profane language to women entering saloons. The trade carried on for another two decades anyway.

The women who worked here out-negotiated the town council on their taxes, and one of them became among the wealthiest self-made women in Flagstaff. Her name was Dutch May. Her story ends in August 1916 in a burning shack behind one of her houses, and nobody was ever charged. Your guide tells it standing on the blocks she owned.

A Freaky Foot Tours guide in a black hat and leather raises a toast and the whole table follows at a Spirits With The Spirits pub crawl stop

04 · Round Two · Rotating Stop

The Rotating Stop

Round two, your guide's call for the night.

The Southside has more taprooms, patios and back bars than one crawl can hold, so the middle stop moves with the night: availability, the size of the group, what the weather is doing at 7,000 feet. Your guide picks it, and the round comes with a story that does not depend on the room.

Alcoholic and non-alcoholic options are available at every stop, so this is not only for drinkers. And yes, your guide will tell you what to order.

Guests gather with their guide at a Southside Flagstaff street corner as evening light breaks through storm clouds over the old stone buildings

05 · Story Stop

Beneath the Street

The tunnel question, answered honestly, from the sidewalk above them.

Everyone asks about the tunnels. Steam-heat mains ran under downtown from 1920 and were sealed long ago; the passages that survive south of the tracks sit on private property, and our research traces one of them from the old Hotel Paso del Norte on South San Francisco Street toward a rooming house across the way. Nobody tours them, and we do not go below ground.

What a guest can do is stand on top of the story. Which is exactly what you will be doing when your guide gets to this one.

Lit by mason-jar lanterns, a Freaky Foot Tours storyteller in a feathered hat works the tables of a Flagstaff bar during the adults-only pub crawl

06 · Last Call

Historic Brewing's Barrel + Bottle House

110 S San Francisco St, Flagstaff, AZ 86001

Last call, in a building that has lived several lives.

Historic Brewing opened its Southside taproom and cocktail lounge on South San Francisco Street in 2015, inside the 1937 Lucero Building, a contributing building of the Southside Historic District that, by local account, was several things before a place to drink good beer. That history explains why a few of our guides were once let into its basement with recorders. What they came back with is the story we save for the end of the night.

This is the final round, and you are welcome to stay on after the stories. Raise a glass to the restless.

Six stops, three rounds, a century of stories south of the tracks. Book the public night, or make it your group's own.

First round at Mother Road Brewing, last call at Historic Brewing's Barrel + Bottle House. The middle stop rotates with availability and is your guide's call for the night.

Plan a Private Crawl

21+ · Valid ID Required

Pick the night. We bring the stories.

Public night Friday, October 30, 2026, 6 to 8 PM · $55 per person · 16 seats · drinks not included

Private crawls from $400 per group · up to 16 guests · about two hours · 3 bar stops

1,000+ five-star reviews. Best of Flagstaff three years running.

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