New Mexico communities big and small have worked for a year or longer to unveil their celebrations next year for the 100-year anniversary of Route 66.
Along the 487-mile historic corridor crossing New Mexico from east to west, they’re restoring gas stations, painting murals, installing public art and fixing up neon signs. They’re planning community-wide parties featuring vintage cars, air shows and historical presentations about how the “Mother Road” shaped life in their communities.
That’s according to a list of roughly $4 million in grants the state Tourism Department has offered over the past two years to promote the centennial. Grants for infrastructure, marketing and special events range from $4,000, like for the Pinto Bean Route 66 Centennial Fiesta in Moriarty, to $250,000 for art installations in Albuquerque.
New Mexico State Historian Rob Martinez said the celebrations are fitting to celebrate a road that connected the country and had profound impacts on tiny towns alongside it. Like the Camino Real and Santa Fe Trail, Route 66 created a “crossroads” of people and culture, he said.
“These trails and roads are very important in not just promoting New Mexico but establishing our culture and changing it, bringing new peoples and new technologies and new ideas on the asphalt,” he said.
Beginning in 1926, with the help of congressional legislation creating a public highway system, the United States began building Route 66, seeking to connect growing cities and rural communities across the country with the help of the automobile.
Doing so in the state of New Mexico proved challenging due to its topography, according to the state Tourism Department. The first iteration of Route 66 entered New Mexico via Texas and shot northward to Santa Fe through Santa Rosa and Tucumcari, before dropping to Albuquerque through Los Lunas, heading back toward Laguna Pueblo and entering into Arizona just past Gallup.
Depression-era public works spending allowed the route to be straightened – eliminating the Los Lunas section – and paved. It was the first paved road in history. From there, it became the most famous American road in history, Martinez said.
New Mexico’s slice of Route 66 has appeared in multiple works of art since then, he said. He remembers an episode of “I Love Lucy” featuring a road trip on Route 66 through Albuquerque. Nat King Cole sings about “Gallup, New Mexico” in the classic 1946 “Get Your Kicks,” and the 1940 film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” starring Henry Fonda features the state prominently.
“Tulsa, Oklahoma, is considered the capital of Route 66, although I would say it should be Gallup or Albuquerque,” Martinez said. “Though, I’m biased.”
Other projects the Tourism Department funded are beautification of highway overpasses in Guadalupe County, an improved gateway in Albuquerque’s Old Town and upgrades to the State Fair Tower and RV village at the New Mexico State Fair grounds.
Santa Rosa received $60,000 for a “musical road” along a half-mile stretch of Route 66 east of the village, paying local company San Bar Construction to install custom rumble strips on the shoulder of the road. At the right speed, drivers who steer their tires onto the rumble strips will hear “Get Your Kicks” playing.
Lisa Brassell, part of the town’s Route 66 committee, said not all of the funding has come together yet. First, the village will need to secure the rights for the song, and the New Mexico Transportation Department will have to repave the road to remove any potholes that might cause a false note, she said.
“Otherwise, nobody can tell what the song is,” she said, laughing.
But even without the musical rumble strips, she said Santa Rosa has festivities planned throughout the year, including the regular use of one local man and his 1926 vintage car.
“He’s become kind of a mascot,” she said.
She said Santa Rosa is just one of dozens of New Mexico communities putting their own local flavor on the celebration.
“It depends on each individual community, on how they capture that essence, that contribution that the Mother Road has made for our communities, especially in rural New Mexico,” she said. “We’re working hard in our communities to celebrate the birthday.”
