Route 66 turns 100: Five stops that define America's most famous road

On November 11, 1926 — the same day state highway officials adopted the U.S. numbered highway system — a diagonal road linking Chicago to Los Angeles was assigned a leftover number nobody else had claimed: 66. A hundred years later, that spare number is the most famous highway designation in America, and the road it marks is in the middle of what observers are calling its biggest revival yet.

Celebrations are running all year across the eight states the route crosses — Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California — and one prominent Route 66 business owner told route66news.com that visitor numbers are up 30 percent this year alone. New and restored neon signs are appearing in towns from Tulsa to Springfield, Illinois. Old buildings are reopening as visitor centers and museums. Even a few historic bridges are being repaired.

Route 66 is a linear community. All of the towns along Route 66 are connected.— Brian Rukes, El Reno historian and El Reno Public Schools teacher

El Reno, Oklahoma — which sits at what Rukes calls "the crossroads of the continent," where Route 66 meets Highway 81 — marked the centennial by installing flags for all eight Route 66 states at Mother Road Plaza. The city's visitor station has logged guests from more than 105 foreign countries in roughly 18 months of operation, according to koco.com.

The road itself spans nearly 2,400 miles and has been many things: a migration corridor for Dust Bowl families in the 1930s (John Steinbeck called it "the Mother Road" in The Grapes of Wrath), a military supply route during World War II, a postwar tourist magnet, and — after President Eisenhower's 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act set the interstate system in motion — a road slowly bypassed and eventually decommissioned in 1985. About 85 percent of it remains drivable today, according to a National Park Service page last updated in 2022, though often under different names and highway numbers.

Here are five stops that capture what makes the Mother Road worth the detour.

**1. World's Largest Catsup Bottle — Collinsville, Illinois.** A 70-foot bottle perched atop a 100-foot water tower, built in 1949 and now on the National Register of Historic Places. It is exactly the kind of roadside absurdity that defines Route 66 — enormous, purposeless and impossible to drive past without stopping.

**2. Blue Whale of Catoosa — Catoosa, Oklahoma.** More than 20 feet tall and 80 feet long, this folk-art whale has sat beside a pond in Catoosa since 1972, according to deseret.com. It is one of the most photographed landmarks on the entire route.

**3. Cadillac Ranch — Amarillo, Texas.** Ten Cadillacs buried nose-down in a field, all tilted at the same angle as the Great Pyramid of Giza. The public art installation in Amarillo is free to visit and has been painted and repainted so many times by visitors that the cars are encrusted in layers of spray paint.

**4. Blue Swallow Motel — Tucumcari, New Mexico.** Open since 1939, the motel's neon sign has become one of the iconic images of Route 66. Tucumcari is among the towns seeing a wave of new and restored neon as part of the centennial revival, according to route66news.com.

**5. Santa Monica Pier — Santa Monica, California.** The western terminus of Route 66, where the road meets the Pacific. An end-of-the-trail marker at the pier is the traditional final stop for anyone driving the route from Chicago, and it marks the point the road didn't actually reach until 1936 — a decade after the highway was established, according to speedwaymedia.com.

The centennial has also produced new landmarks. Oklahoma added oversized sculptures including a "Kicks 66" boot and a Big Red Gun for the anniversary, according to the Oklahoman. For travelers who want to plan around events, a Route 66 Centennial Caravan runs from Santa Monica to Chicago between June 6 and June 25, and a centennial parade is scheduled in Santa Monica on July 12. A free virtual speaker series runs monthly through October, covering topics from Route 66 foodways to its connections with baseball and the atomic age.

Route66news.com editor, who has covered the highway for more than 21 years, notes that this third renaissance — driven by centennial publicity — may surpass the revivals that followed Michael Wallis's 1990 book "Route 66: The Mother Road" and the 2006 release of Pixar's "Cars." A 2011 Rutgers University economic impact study put the road's direct annual economic effects at $132 million, a figure that prompted many municipalities to invest in preservation for the first time.

One thing the centennial has not yet delivered: a federal designation as a National Historic Trail under the National Park Service, despite multiple attempts by members of Congress. Some stretches have been designated National Scenic Byways or All-American Roads, but the broader trail designation remains stalled.

Why it matters — Route 66's centennial is prompting the largest wave of preservation, investment and tourism the road has seen since its 1985 decommissioning — making 2026 an unusually good year to drive it before more of its landmarks disappear.

Reported by oklahoman.com, deseret.com, travelandleisure.com, history.com, britannica.com, speedwaymedia.com, route66news.com, rt66nm.org, newson6.com, koco.com