Historic Route 66 Ribbon Road - Sidewalk Highway

The narrow road's south end is Afton, a railroad town older than the highway. It grew after the Atlantic and Pacific, later the Frisco, built through this part of the Cherokee Nation in 1871, and its name is credited either to a Scottish railroad surveyor, Anton Aires, naming it for his daughter, or to Burns's poem Flow Gently Sweet Afton; both trace to Scotland's Afton River. A second line in 1901 made it a Frisco division point, and by 1910 it had 1,279 people. Two Afton Route 66 sites joined the National Register in 1995.

What the plaque says

Historic Route 66 Historic Route 66 Ribbon Road- Sidewalk Highway Completed in 1922 as Federal Highway Project No. 8. Running 15.46 miles from Miami to Afton. The only remaining 9' section of original pavement on the old Route 66 system, taken out of service in 1937. A National Register of Historic Places Site.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Coleman Theatre — 5.0 mi
  A 1929 vaudeville house on Route 66 in Miami, Spanish Colonial outside and Louis XV within, with the only 1928 Mighty Wurlitzer still in the building it was built for.
• Brush Creek Bridge (Rainbow Bridge) — 21 mi
  The last of three Marsh rainbow arch bridges on Kansas's short stretch of Route 66, built in 1923 and kept standing in 1992 when the road association refused to let it go.
• Cabin Creek Battlefield — 25 mi
  The Texas Road ford in the Cherokee Nation where Stand Watie twice struck at Union supply trains for Fort Gibson, losing in July 1863 and winning 130 wagons in September 1864.

More markers nearby

• Gateway Sign — 4.7 mi
• Coleman Theatre — 5.0 mi
• Baxter Springs Massacre — 18 mi
• Cabin Creek Battlefield — 29 mi