Classic car owners and groups from all over show up for the 140-mile rally.
Plus, don’t forget Winona and the Route 66 Centennial.
The year-long Centennial will be celebrated across Arizona and seven other states the Mother Road bisected on the 2,448-mile road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles. These celebrations include car rallies, street fairs, vintage car shows and Route 66 museum exhibits.
“Every place on Route 66 I think has something special about it, something to be appreciated,” said Kaylen Wilson, a Northern Arizona University graduate student in history curating a Route 66 exhibit at the university’s Cline Library.
“Echoes of the Open Road” includes a mockup of a midcentury Route 66 motel lobby, vintage license plates from each of the eight Route 66 states and highway maps from the past century.
Plus, there’s a restored neon No Vacancy sign believed to be from Andy Womack’s Flamingo Motor Hotel, Wilson said. The Flamingo hosted Route 66 travelers at Flagstaff’s Y-intersection for a half century until it was razed in 1997.
“I hope people who get to experience the exhibit gain a better appreciation of the people of Route 66 and the communities of Route 66,” she said.
The Cline Library exhibit, open to the public, will be on display through the end of 2026.
Meanwhile, the Museum of Northern Arizona features an exhibit – “Wagon Road to Mother Road – through Jan. 31, 2027. It traces the evolution of travel across Northern Arizona from the Beale Wagon Road in 1857 to the National Old Trails Highway and Route 66 in 1926.
Kingman is home to the Arizona Route 66 Museum in the city’s former powerhouse, which has been renovated and improved with new centennial exhibits.
In Winslow, bypassed in 1979 by Interstate 40, the Old Trails Museum has opened a show “100 Years of Route 66 in Winslow.” It features a collection of “then and now” photos of historic Winslow buildings on Route 66. The show will be on display all year in the Visitor Center/Hubbell Trading Post.
Williams was the last town the superhighway left behind in October 1984.
Bobby Troup, who wrote the widely covered 1946 song “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66,” appeared at the opening celebration of I-40 in Williams.
He told the crowd: “I really hope you tear this interstate highway down and go back to Route 66.” Not exactly what the highway dignitaries wanted to hear.
Looking back a century, Route 66 was christened the cross-country diagonal route from Chicago to Los Angeles. Flagstaff was a town of about 3,500 souls with a busy logging industry and a small college in the ponderosa pines.
Gasoline was about a 25 cents per gallon. The Flagstaff city marshal during Prohibition had to deal with bootleggers selling bathtub gin and corn whiskey.
On Nov. 11, 1926, the Bureau of Public Roads enacted the first federal highway numbering system. Even numbered highways ran west to east and odd-numbered roads went south to north.
Route 66 became famous as the Mother Road, as John Steinbeck labeled it in his 1939 novel “Grapes of Wrath.” Also dubbed the “Main Street of America,” Route 66 served Flagstaff for 42 years before I-40 bypassed the mountain town Oct. 1, 1968.
Flagstaff’s main centennial event at Heritage Square is set for June 6, which is 6/6/2026. The celebration will include live music and an art festival, food trucks, craft beer and magic shows for kids. Other events include a classic car show, optical illusion sidewalk chalk art and skywriting with an airplane spelling out Route 66 themed messages, said Ryan Randazzo, Discover Flagstaff spokesperson.
The centennial celebration coincides with Flagstaff’s annual Hullabaloo festival at Wheeler Park on June 6-7.
The stars have also aligned for Flagstaff’s Lowell Observatory to participate in celebrating Route 66. Lowell has a new tour called “Cosmic Highways: A Centennial Tour.”
Visitors get a chance to see astronomer Percival Lowell’s 1911 Stevens-Duryea car that he drove in Flagstaff and on Route 66 adventures. The tour is offered at 3 p.m. daily. Tickets allow readmission for guests to return in the evening for stargazing and telescope viewing.
Seligman, the birthplace of Historic Route 66, will be a hub of Route 66 Centennial celebrations. The small town 75 miles west of Flagstaff is where local barber Angel Delgadillo and others convinced Arizona highway officials in 1987 to designate Route 66 an historic highway.
New monument signs will be unveiled at Seligman and a day-long block party is set for April 30. That will set the stage for the 37th annual Route 66 Fun Run, a vintage car rally May 1-3 from Seligman to Kingman and finishing at Topock/Golden Shores.
“It’s going to be bigger and more festive than ever,” said Katie Barthlow of the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona.
The Fun Run is open to 900 vehicles, 100 more than previous years.
Classic car owners and groups from all over show up for the 140-mile rally.
“A lot of people living in and along Route 66 communities take such pride in Route 66 and its history,” Barthlow said. “I imagine many people locally, regionally from Mohave and Yavapai counties and beyond will be attending the Seligman celebration.”
Hemmings Great Race from Springfield, Ill., to Pasadena, Calif., is an official Route 66 Centennial event. It features cars made before 1975. Great Race drivers are scheduled to stay overnight in Flagstaff on June 25 and have lunch in Kingman June 26.
The Route 66 Caravan from Santa Monica, California to Chicago is scheduled to arrive in Kingman June 9, travel to Flagstaff June 10 and then on to Gallup, New Mexico June 11. The Caravan will travel on remaining stretches of Route 66 as much as possible. FBN
By Peter Corbett, FBN
Photo by Austin Corbett: Galaxy Diner lights up West Route 66 in Flagstaff. The colorful diner in 1994 replaced a former Bob’s Big Boy restaurant.
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