Route 66 in Amarillo

Amarillo's Route 66 economy ran on motels. Tourist camps first appeared in the city's newspapers in the early to mid-1920s and grew into tourist courts whose cabins sheltered both travelers and their cars, and by the 1930s the city had more than thirty motels, most of them on Route 66 and many with faux adobe walls and vigas. On the east side the road followed Northeast Eighth, where the Triangle Motel went up in Art Moderne stucco in 1946, and Amarillo Boulevard carried the 1956 alignment. Interstate 40 in the late 1960s largely ended the old road's motel trade.

What the plaque says

Route 66 in Amarillo Commonly called the "Main Street of America" and also the "Mother Road," Route 66 became the first paved transcontinental highway in the U.S. spanning from Chicago to Los Angeles; the route in Texas crossed 7 panhandle counties over 177 miles. Route 66 was popular with automobile tourists. The road was important in the development of Sixth Street and the San Jacinto area in Amarillo, which was the only large urban city on the Texas route. In 1994 the area was listed in the National Register of historic places, and has become the focus of local preservation efforts. (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 — 2.8 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

• Amarillo Natatorium ("The Nat") — steps away
• Wild Horse Lake — 1.2 mi
• St. Mary's Academy — 1.2 mi
• Self Sacrifice of Padre Fray Juan de Padilla - 1544 — 1.2 mi