Route 66 Sixth Street Historic District

Sixth Street was a gravel road through the San Jacinto Heights addition, a streetcar suburb west of downtown, until 1921. When it became part of Route 66 in 1926 it was paved with asphalt over concrete, and it was the first highway carrying travelers out of Amarillo to the south and west. Over the next decades the houses along it gave way to stores, cafes and filling stations. The thirteen blocks between Georgia and Forrest were listed on the National Register in 1994 as the city's most intact run of buildings tied to the highway.

Walking west from the Natatorium at Georgia, the road's stages show building by building. The Carolina Building of 1926 is a row of Spanish Colonial Revival storefronts under a red tile roof. The Dutch Mill at 3401 has been in business since 1932 and once had a windmill at the curb. Taylor's Texaco at 3512 is Walter D. Teague's standard porcelain station design of 1937, and the Adkinson-Baker station at 3200, opened in 1939 to sell Texaco gas, is little changed. At 3821, Herb Martin ran a Phillips station from the 1930s to the 1990s, gave gas to some travelers who could not pay and let some sleep there, and replaced his cottage with a canted-glass station in 1963.

Today the storefronts hold antique shops, restaurants and specialty stores, and the street is a center of Amarillo nightlife. Borden's Heap-O-Cream at 3120 was rehabilitated in 1990 by Preservation Amarillo and a local Boy Scout troop.