Get your kicks, St. Louis — the Mother Road is turning 100. Route 66 was established on November 11, 1926, and in this centennial year two St. Louis museum stops are celebrating the most famous highway in America, including the stretch that rolled right through our city on its way from Chicago to Santa Monica.
From November 2 to 30, the Missouri Historical Society Library and Research Center, at 225 S. Skinker Boulevard, hosts Missouri’s Main Street: 100 Years of Route 66, the new traveling exhibition from the State Historical Society of Missouri. The show tours the state all year, spending a month near the historic road in each host community, and its St. Louis stop lands just in time for the highway’s birthday month.
Inside, visitors can explore Missouri’s Route 66 story through natural Ozark wonders, homegrown architecture, joyful roadside kitsch and the legendary personalities who lived, worked and traveled along the pavement. It is a story St. Louis knows well: generations of travelers crossed the Mississippi here on the old Chain of Rocks Bridge — famous for the gentle bend in the middle of the river — and rolled into a city of motels, diners and neon.
The celebration continues in Forest Park, where the Missouri History Museum’s hallway installation Route 66: Main Street Through St. Louis highlights the region’s own role in the highway’s history. Two exhibitions, one beloved road — a perfect centennial road trip that starts and ends right here in St. Louis, as Happy City News is delighted to share.
Photo: Marcin Wichary / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
