The local Route 66 center is already seeing a lot more traffic, even before this month’s centennial festivities in Amarillo officially begin.
Vendors and establishments along the Sixth Street area of Route 66 are betting big on the influx of visitors and locals coming in starting Thursday, June 4, in Amarillo for the 10 days of the Texas Route 66 Festival.
The Route 66 Festival, organized by Visit Amarillo, will encompass Route 66 events throughout the period of the Amarillo leg of the festival, which is celebrating 100 Years of the Mother Road from 1926 to 2026.
A full list of events can be found at the VisitAmarillo website.
In fact, people have been coming in droves already, according to Penny Clark at Route 66 Visitors Bureau at 1900 SW 6th St.
“Since May 5, through May 20, we’ve seen people from 29 counties and 46 states come in,” she said as she was sorting through new inventory which is coming in daily. Clark said that new shipments of shirts and memorabilia keep coming in and selling.
“I have been working on getting things stocked for 21 days in a row,” she said. “We can’t keep things in stock,” she said laughing. The shop will be open Saturday and Sunday throughout the Amarillo Festival from June 4 – 13, when the big finale happens. As she spoke, several visitors from out of town shopped in the full store.
She said that on Saturday, she will be traveling to Jerico for the Route 66 Cornhole Tournament and has to be there by 7 a.m.
The tourist information center is housed in the historic Myer’s Friend Chicken Restaurant Building and serves as a hub for Route 66 history and culture and features unique gifts, maps and a documentary about the Texas Route 66 experience.
The center is a good starting point for road trippers to get local travel guides and plans through journey through the historic San Jacinto district,
Route 66 mural to be completed soon
The Amarillo Route 66 colorful and interactive mural — which is being finished at the underpass on Sixth Street between downtown and the San Jacinto District where the Route 66 shops are located — is coming together.
The mural was approved by the City of Amarillo at the March 24 meeting and presented at the April14 meeting, according to Kashion Smith, executive director of Amarillo Convention & Visitors Bureau.
“This mural is more than a mural and will include 66 stories collected from residents who remember Route 66, and it charm and uniqueness at the Mother Road in throughout the 40s to the 70s, when it was decommissioned,” previously said Shawn Kennedy, executive director of Blank Spaces, whose artists have been working on the mural.
According to Kennedy, visitors can look through their phone camera and link to National Geographic through a website to see stories that are embedded in the mural for extra depth of the tales depicted in various scenes.
The interactive mural was a collaboration between Blank Spaces, PBS and National Geographic Magazine to create a “story map,” which is based on memories of local residents of the Texas Panhandle.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Route 66 shops gear up for 100-year festival of the Mother Road
Reporting by Nell Williams, Amarillo Globe-News / Amarillo Globe-News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
