Elk City, OK

Don Mullenix grew up under the spell of Route 66, just 200 yards from the Mother Road of America, watching the traveling show from his home in Elk City, Okla., and helping many wayfaring strangers who encountered trouble.

A roadside park with concrete picnic tables near his home sat where the road curves as it leaves Elk City (pop. 10,510) and heads toward Sayre, Okla. “People would often run off the road or their cars would break down. They’d see the lights at our house and come for help,” the 45-year-old Mullenix says, recalling the days of tourist courts, drive-in restaurants, and movie theaters that were the stuff of legend on America’s Main Street. Route 66—so named because a businessman instrumental in making the road a reality liked the sound better than Route 62 or 64—celebrated its 75th anniversary this year with events all along the road.

“For most people, traveling Route 66 meant a better life, especially for those traveling west. Many ended up coming back to Oklahoma later on, so it was a journey through life and not just a journey in mileage,’’ Mullenix says. He and John West for several years published the Route 66 World News to guide European and Asian travelers to lesser-known roadside attractions, such as Carscorillo, Okla., a town where gold was discovered in 1895.

Mullinex says modern travelers on the road storied in songs such as Bobby Troup’s (Get Your Kicks) On Route 66 are often searching for a simpler time.

“The older folks are trying to remember the good ol’ days, and the young people seem to be searching for the good ol’ days,” Mullenix says.

Elk City’s National Route 66 Museum recaptures life on that open road—from the role the highway played during the Great Depression as thousands left the Dust Bowl behind, to its mythology as the path for adventure in the 1950s and ’60s.

The museum—part of a complex that includes pioneer life, rodeo memorabilia, and farm and ranch museums—takes travelers from Chicago to Los Angeles. It covers the road’s twists and turns through eight states as an audio narrator tells stories of those who hoped Route 66 was a highway to the Promised Land.

Displays show drive-in restaurants, custom hot rod cars, flashing neon business signs, red-and-white Burma Shave road signs, and soldiers hitchhiking home from World War II.

Museum Curator Wanda Queenan lives in one of the road’s famous attractions, the Queenan Trading Post. In 1980, she closed the trading post where she bargained with members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes for blankets, pottery, beaded work, and moccasins.

“Back then it wasn’t so much the road people were interested in, it was the stores along the road,’’ Queenan says.

Mullenix says the east side of Elk City retains the flavor of bygone days on Route 66, starting with the Casa Grande Hotel.

The hotel, host of the 1931 National Route 66 Convention, now houses the Anadarko Basin Museum of Natural History. John West is president of the museum, which has a large collection of minerals, fossils, oil, and gas memorabilia, and one of the world’s largest drilling rigs.

The Flamingo Restaurant, a family style café, has operated since 1961 on Route 66. Owner Mickey Brower says his customers often include people from other countries traveling the road. “Sometimes I think they get a bigger kick out of it than our own people,” Brower says.

Queenan keeps her own memories of Route 66 alive by driving the old highway when she can, taking it back from church in Clinton, Okla., or from visits to her daughter in Erick, Okla.

“Several times a year, our family would travel out West to Arizona and California,’’ she says. “Taking the old road always brings back those memories.”

Shelley Brinsfield writes from her home in Edmond, Okla.

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