Amarillo Natatorium ("The Nat")

The Nat changed owners and purposes along with the road outside. Engineer Arthur Ball and salesman Felix Walker built the pool, and J. D. Tucker bought it in 1926 and laid the maple floor that turned it into a ballroom. In the early 1930s Harry Badger renamed it the Nat Dine and Dance Palace, opened the Nat Cafe and gave the front its castle look, and William Maddox kept it a nightclub through the 1940s. In 1994 it became part of the Route 66-Sixth Street Historic District, and it has since housed an antiques shop and a marketplace.

What the plaque says

Amarillo Natatorium ("The Nat") The Natatorium, an open air building surrounding a swimming pool that measured 36' by 101', opened in July 1922. "The Nat" was enclosed in 1923 for year-round use. In 1926 the building was converted into a dance hall with 10,000 square feet of maple flooring covering the pool area. "The Nat" also provided dining and at its peak employed 40 staff members. Well known bands traveling along Route 66 often stopped here to entertain. Though closed as a public dance hall in the 1960's, "The Nat" served the Amarillo area as a significant social center for decades. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Route 66 Sixth Street Historic District — steps away
  Thirteen blocks of Amarillo's streetcar suburb that Route 66 turned into a roadside strip, from the 1922 Nat to Texaco, Phillips and Dutch Mill stations, now shops and bars.
• Helium Centennial Time Columns Monument — 2.7 mi
  Four sealed time capsules raised in Amarillo in 1968 for helium's centennial, in the city that for years produced almost all the world's commercial helium from the Cliffside field.
• Cadillac Ranch — 7.0 mi
  Ten Cadillacs from 1949 to 1963 planted nose down in a pasture west of Amarillo by the Ant Farm collective in 1974, on private land where visitors are let in to paint them.
• Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — 16 mi
  The Panhandle's great collection, some two million objects behind a 1933 Art Deco hall carved with cattle brands, closed to the public since March 2025 over fire-safety violations.

More markers nearby

• Route 66 in Amarillo — steps away
• St. Mary's Academy — 1.2 mi
• Wild Horse Lake — 1.2 mi
• Self Sacrifice of Padre Fray Juan de Padilla - 1544 — 1.2 mi