By Nick Gerlich
(This is the first in an ongoing series of faculty-written essays and stories that feature the off-campus sides of their life. We’re looking for some good volunteers to help write this column, too!)
I grew up near Route 66. It’s just that it wasn’t in Amarillo. And now that it is about to turn 100 years old in 2026, we are all going to be hearing quite a bit about it.
It’s too easy to take things for granted when they are in your backyard, kind of like Palo Duro Canyon or the beach. That’s how Route 66 was for me in Chicagoland. It was just another road emanating out of the downtown district, just another spoke on a wheel. We drove it on vacations to the south and west. And I heard my father regale us many a time with fond memories of the 1955 road trip he took with two buddies. It was the ultimate bachelor party as they piled into Dad’s shiny new ‘55 Bel Air headed down 66 toward LA.
I already knew that 66 came through Amarillo, having arrived here once in the back seat of my parents’ car in the early-70s. But by then I-40 was being built piece-meal through these parts, and Dad had to tediously get on and off the new freeway many times, and get on 66 for a few more miles.
When I arrived here in 1989 to teach at WT, Route 66 had already been federally decommissioned for four years, but I knew the path it followed through town. The next year, Michael Wallis’ Route 66: The Mother Road was released, and I picked up a copy, beginning my studies of what is arguably the best-known highway in the US, and perhaps the world. On occasion, I would drive or bicycle segments of it between Chicago and LA.
But before continuing, enjoy some photos from my many adventures along the Mother Road!
It wasn’t until 2010, though, that I decided to get serious about not just studying books about it, but also to get out on it and methodically drive every inch, photographing landscapes, abandoned buildings, old signs, and more. My passion ignited, Route 66 became my sandbox. It was where I went to catch a glimpse of the past, to listen for the fading voices of my father and his pals, to imagine what life must have been like back then.
My yearnings were little different from what John Steinbeck was inspired to write in 1939’s The Grapes Of Wrath, chronicling Dust Bowl refugees from Oklahoma who drove along Route 66 to what they hoped was a better life in California. While I didn’t exactly have the same literary fortune as Steinbeck, I did co-author two books on Route 66, one in English, and the other in German (thanks to a co-author who translated) for that market.
Route 66 was officially born on November 11, 1926, the result of federal legislation not long prior that sought to provide order to the growing network of highways crisscrossing the land. Instead of wordy names, they would now have numbers. As you might suspect, cities wanted these numbered roads to go through their towns, because that meant traffic, and traffic meant business. It became a competitive sport, especially for the likes of Cyrus Avery of Tulsa.
Avery, a businessman himself, wanted a diagonal all-weather road from Chicago to southern California, and, of course, it would come through downtown Tulsa. He lobbied hard for US 60, but the Governor of Kentucky, who had far more political clout, prevailed. Avery was going to settle for US 62, but then discovered that the highly alliterative 66 was not spoken for yet.
He pounced on it, and just like that, the wheels were set in motion for a road that changed the nation and influenced pop culture for years to come. From Bobby Troup’s (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66, to TV’s Route 66, and Cars on the big screen, the Mother Road has long been front and center.
As we look ahead to the centennial year, there will be celebrations in Amarillo and elsewhere up and down the Route. There will be an influx of tourists, both domestic and international, as they try to get a glimpse of all the things I have seen and heard. There will be pomp and circumstance, more books, demand for the lingering vestiges of the old days still visible in a dwindling number of vintage motels, curio shops, and roadside attractions.
There will also be many people who want to visit the restored Painted Desert Trading Post in eastern Arizona that nine others and I rescued a few years ago, at great personal expense and time. Before and After pics are in the slideshow above. It is simultaneously an outdoor museum, art installation, and example of how preservation can be done successfully.
While you are rolling through Amarillo, be sure to look for the new brown signs that mark the Route, much of it along Amarillo Boulevard and SW 6th Avenue. Take note of the buildings and businesses, the architecture, and then try to imagine Amarillo in all its former glory, the one my father and his friends saw 70 years ago.
Then mark your calendars for June 4-13 next year. There’s going to be a big party right here. You don’t want to miss it. And in a strange kind of way, in spite of having long been away from Chicago, I have wound up living my life near Route 66. I wouldn’t have it any other way.