Route 66 turns 100 this year, and the towns along it are making sure the whole country hears about it. Somewhere between Chicago and Santa Monica, small-town centennial calendars have exploded into a cross-state car caravan, a shot at a world record and at least one parade that has never once behaved itself. Turns out, a century in, the Mother Road still knows exactly how to throw a party.
State tourism boards, regional Route 66 associations and hometown parade committees are the ones actually running the show. It’s a mix that ranges from a state lieutenant governor’s office to a volunteer group keeping an old barbed-wire museum on the map. Nobody needed a single national organizer to pull this off. Some of it is polished and sponsor-backed, while others are small towns doing what they have always done, throwing open their doors and hoping people show up.
Online chatter about driving Route 66 jumped 302% this year as the highway’s 100th birthday approached, outpacing every other scenic route tracked this summer, including the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Pacific Coast Highway. Much of that conversation centers on multi-stop itineraries, travelers pairing a night at a downtown Chicago hotel with a string of stays that end as far out as Flagstaff, Arizona. The events already planned in Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma and California give that number something concrete to point to.
Missouri sets the pace with a bike ride and a screening
St. Louis is one of five cities the Route 66 Road Ahead Partnership designated as the official satellite site for the highway’s national kickoff, selected alongside Joliet, Amarillo, Albuquerque and Santa Monica. The centerpiece is a 6.6-mile group bike ride through downtown, alongside car displays, documentary screenings and family activities. St. Louis also gets a live cut-in during the kickoff’s national broadcast.
Texas turns the anniversary into a road trip of its own
The Old Route 66 Association of Texas is marking the centennial with a three-day motor tour in October, starting in Texola, right on the Oklahoma border, and working west through Shamrock, McLean, Jericho and Amarillo before ending in Vega.
Entry costs $66, a detail that lines up with the highway’s name, and it covers lunch on both days plus a banquet dinner. The route runs through McLean, home to the Devil’s Rope Museum, a barbed wire collection housed in a converted brassiere factory that has become one of the odder must-stops on the Texas stretch of the highway.
Oklahoma chased a world record
Tulsa held what organizers called an official world-record attempt for the largest classic car parade in history. Thousands of vintage vehicles traveled 5.5 miles through the city on May 30. Oklahoma City held its own centennial celebration that same day, a full day of live music and local food at Scissortail Park.
California closes it out with the parade that refuses to behave
Pasadena’s Doo Dah Parade has spent nearly five decades poking fun at the city’s famous Rose Parade, an irreverent alternative built around funny costumes and eclectic music groups. This year’s edition, scheduled for late November, is folding a Route 66 tribute into that lineup, a stranger send-off for the centennial year than a ribbon-cutting would have been.
The clearest evidence that this is more than online chatter comes from rental car data. Cars picked up in Chicago, the birthplace of Route 66, and returned somewhere along the highway are up 8% year over year between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. It is a smaller number than the social media spike, but it tracks something more concrete: cars that actually left Chicago and came back somewhere else on the map.
Route 66 will keep marking its 100th year deep into November, when Pasadena’s parade closes out this stretch of centennial events a continent away from where the highway begins. A hundred years in, the Mother Road isn’t done throwing parties yet.
Jennifer Allen is a retired chef turned traveler, cookbook author and nationally syndicated journalist; she’s also a co-founder of Food Drink Life, where she shares expert travel tips, cruise insights and luxury destination guides. A recognized cruise expert with a deep passion for high-end experiences and off-the-beaten-path destinations, Jennifer explores the world with curiosity, depth and a storyteller’s perspective. Her articles are regularly featured on the Associated Press Wire, The Washington Post, Seattle Times, MSN and more.