Journey: As Route 66 turns 100, Oklahoma bets on guests

By Dennis Lennox, CP Contributor Sunday, January 11, 2026

TULSA, Oklahoma — As the United States prepares to mark the centennial of Route 66 in 2026, Oklahoma is making a deliberate case that the Mother Road’s future issues as a lot as its previous.

It can be simple to drive straight via with out ever stopping. Interstate highways permit motorists to cross the Sooner State in a matter of hours, pausing just for gasoline or quick meals earlier than pushing on to some other place. But to take action would miss the purpose — and the place.

Oklahoma, which in 1907 grew to become the forty sixth state admitted to the Union, gives guests a glimpse of the true America: a state formed by motion and migration, by frontier ambition and reinvention and by communities that rose, tailored and endured because the nation modified round them.

With greater than 400 drivable miles — the longest steady stretch of Route 66 in any state — Oklahoma is leaning into the anniversary as a option to drive fashionable tourism.

Tourism, which makes up the state’s third-largest trade, is very vital to state and native governments as a result of funding for core companies, together with police and fireplace safety, is basically pushed by gross sales tax income.

To higher perceive what the Route 66 centennial represents for Oklahoma, this author sat down for an unique interview with Lieutenant Gov. Matt Pinnell earlier this month in Tulsa.

“We live or die on the sales tax,” stated Pinnell, who was in Gov. Kevin Stitt’s cupboard as secretary of tourism and now chairs the Tourism and Recreation Commission. “You want people to come into your state, drop dollars and then go home.”

Route 66 enters Oklahoma City, the state’s capital and largest metropolis, not as a relic however as a part of a working capital the place tourism, authorities and tradition intersect. Multiple historic alignments hint how motorists as soon as moved via city earlier than interstates reshaped journey patterns, and people routes now cross a few of the metropolis’s most consequential landmarks. The State Capitol gives a pure place to begin. Rising from a landscaped campus north of downtown, the limestone constructing is the one state capitol with an lively oil properly on its grounds.

Built through the oil growth years, the 109-year-old domed construction, with its neoclassical design and neighboring midcentury fashionable workplace buildings, displays the identical confidence and ahead momentum that outlined Route 66’s early a long time, when vehicles promised freedom, prosperity and connection. Don’t overlook the close by Oklahoma History Center, a state historical past museum that’s fairly good. Modern and properly curated, it covers the whole lot of Oklahoma’s story.

A brief drive away, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum provides cultural depth. Long considered one of many premier Western museums within the nation, it explores ranching, Native American historical past, Western artwork and the mythology of the frontier.

For Route 66 vacationers, the museum locations the freeway inside an extended historic continuum. Long earlier than motorists took to the street, routes solid first by Indians after which cattle trails and railroads formed the land.

West of Oklahoma City, the panorama opens up, damaged solely by the occasional city or roadside attraction, together with retro diners and interval buildings.

Seventy miles away in Weatherford is without doubt one of the most surprising highlights of the Oklahoma Route 66 expertise.

Millions of {dollars} in state revitalization grants have helped communities alongside the outdated freeway spruce up streetscapes and create new points of interest aimed toward guests. One instance is the current addition in downtown Weatherford of a 30-foot “Space Man” statue honoring native son Gen. Thomas P. Stafford, an astronaut who flew on Gemini and Apollo missions and later commanded the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

The massive draw right here is the Stafford Air & Space Museum.

What started as a modest exhibit on the native airport is now a Smithsonian affiliate with a formidable assortment, together with a disarmed nuclear bomb and artifacts linked to Stafford and NASA extra broadly. You don’t look forward to finding a museum of that caliber in Oklahoma, not to mention in a city of 12,076 individuals. That shock alone can flip a fast cease into an in a single day keep.

Farther west, Clinton gives the narrative spine of Oklahoma’s Route 66 expertise.

The Oklahoma Route 66 Museum is hardly roadside kitsch. The reveals chronicle the freeway’s full arc from Dust Bowl migration to postwar street journeys and the disruption brought on by the interstate system.

At the japanese finish of Oklahoma sits Tulsa.

If Route 66 has a capital, it might be right here. The state’s second-largest metropolis has totally embraced the freeway as a part of its id.

Tulsa’s architectural legacy additionally looms giant over the route. One standout is Boston Avenue United Methodist Church. With its distinctive Art Deco design, the landmark displays the oil-era prosperity that paralleled the golden age of automobile journey.

Music historical past provides one other layer via the legacy of musician and songwriter Leon Russell, who reworked a derelict Methodist church right into a recording studio. That area, recognized right now because the Church Studio, stays lively. Tours provide guests an opportunity to discover its previous and glimpse its future.

Driving the sluggish method via Oklahoma is an invite to do greater than comply with an outdated freeway. It is a chance to cease, linger and uncover a state that persistently punches above its weight.

“Tourism is the front door to economic development,” Pinnell stated. “When we can get people here for three days or a week, we can show them what Oklahoma really is — a modern frontier, a great place to do business and a great place to raise a family.”

A century after Route 66 was established, Pinnell and different Oklahoma leaders are betting that vacationers will select curiosity over pace. Those who do might discover that the Sooner State is not only one thing to cross via, however someplace price returning to lengthy after the centennial banners come down.

If you go

The airports in each Tulsa and Oklahoma City are often served by the most important airways. You’ll most likely need to fly into one airport and out of the opposite.

For lodges, the Fordson Hotel in Oklahoma City, which is a part of Hyatt’s Unbound Collection, is housed in an Albert Kahn-designed former Ford Motor Company meeting plant. Alternatives embody the Omni and Hilton’s Skirvin. In Tulsa, the Ambassador Hotel, a Marriott Autograph Collection property, or the Hyatt Regency are choices.

Dennis Lennox writes a journey column for The Christian Post