One reason Route 66 is great is because you learn something new about it all the time.

This time, I’m talking about Mitchell Caverns, which is off Route 66 in the Providence Mountains of Southern California’s Mojave Desert. Inland Press-Enterprise columnist Mark Muckenfuss wrote about it today.

The reason not a lot of people know about it is because tours are conducted only on weekends during the summer. It’s also not an attraction in itself — it’s part of the Providence Mountains State Recreation Area. The Mitchell family ran the caverns from the 1930s until the 1950s, when the patriarch died.

DesertUSA.com has an excellent summary of Mitchell Caverns. The U.S. Geological Survey and National Park Service site has excellent photos of the caverns.

The Tank Farm Loop near Kellyville and a 1926 truss bridge near Chelsea, both on older alignments of Route 66 in Oklahoma, were added to the National Register of Historic Places, reports the Associated Press.

Here’s a picture of the Chelsea bridge, which goes over Pryor Creek, from the Oklahoma Highway Bridges site.

Here are the details of the Tank Farm Loop.

Roadbed section beginning approximately 0.6 mile west of the I-44 overpass west of Kellyville in Creek County. Total 1.6 mile section of 1926 PC paved alignment bypassed in 1938. An excellent example of first-generation paving which crosses several different terrain features. Known by many Route 66 hobbyists as the Tank Farm Loop because it passes through a former oil field.

A map of the Tank Farm Loop can be found here. So if you haven’t seen it, go check it out. It’s worth it.

• Santa Monica Close-up contains photos from the final day of the Mercedes-Benz Club of America’s Historic Route 66 Tour. About 100 participants started, and about 20 dropped out because of mechanical or medical reasons.
• Maya Reynolds tells the story of how Jackson Browne’s “Take It Easy,” which immortalizes a certain corner in Winslow, Ariz., came to be. Hint: Glenn Frey ended up with a significant role.
• Veronica explains why you shouldn’t drive over a dead skunk on Route 66 — or on any other road for that matter.
• Joe’s Road Life posted a bunch of high-quality images of Meteor Crater in Arizona.

The City of Albuquerque, spurred by Mayor Marty Chavez, is considering a sign ordinance that’s so financially onerous and controversial that I’m surprised it was proposed at all.

In short, the ordinance would outlaw nearly all existing standalone signs and signs that are attached to buildings. This, of course, would include virtually all neon signs along Central Avenue, aka Route 66, including historic ones.

The Sign Defense Group, which opposes the ordinance, has pictures of current signs that would be outlawed. That includes the El Don Motel neon sign (above) and the historic Aztec Motel neon sign (below). Dozens of other neon signs along Central also would be affected.

Apparently Chavez became enamored of a similar ordinance used in Scottsdale, Ariz. However, the business community is against it, as shown in this Albuquerque Journal article. The Albuquerque Tribune is against it. And Route 66ers are definitely against it.

Here’s the proposed 80-page ordinance in an Acrobat file. Note that all the underlined sentences are the ones that are disputed or will change, and there are a lot of them.

I called Deborah Nason, public information officer for the city’s Environmental Planning Commission that has to approve the proposal before it advances to the City Council.

Nason recently told me that a Planning Commission decision on the ordinance has already been deferred from mid-September until Oct. 19, and she anticipates it could be deferred clear into January.

“It’s been very controversial,” she said.

I asked Nason whether the city is considering an exemption for Albuquerque’s famed Route 66 neon signs.

“I’m pretty sure (the signs) would be preserved,” she said.

Nason seemed uncertain whether the ordinance would advance at all because it’s so unpopular. “There’s still a long way to go until it passes,” she said.

Nason suggested that those who want Route 66 neon signs preserved to e-mail staff planner Russell Brito at rbrito@cabq.gov . He is the one who’s considering and adding amendments to the proposed ordinance.

So here’s what to do: E-mail Brito and politely ask that the city place an exemption for signs on the Route 66 corridor, including the pre-1937 alignments. Explain that neon signs on the Mother Road are a major attraction to tourists, and that the loss of such signs would provide less of an incentive to visit Albuquerque.

If enough roadies lobby for the preservation of Route 66 neon signs, the exemption probably will be included. That way, the signs on Central Avenue and other Route 66 alignments will be safeguarded.

And if the proposed sign ordinance fails simply because it’s too hot for the city to handle, that’ll be OK, too.

(Photos courtesy of Albuquerque neon gallery from Redforkhippiechick.)

The fellows at Carpix.net tested a 2007 Ford Shelby Mustang by flooring it for a 9.5-mile stretch of Route 66 from the the ruins of the Roadrunner restaurant to Roy’s in Amboy, Calif.

Reported average speed was 141 mph. See for yourself:

I wouldn’t have tried it. The Mother Road out in the Mojave Desert is notoriously bumpy, especially since the rainy spring of 2005. One chuckhole could spell disaster at 140 mph.

And the girl in the video probably said at one point: “Can I take these damned heels off now?”

Despite a fire nearly destroying the Standin’ on a Corner mural in Winslow, Ariz., the Route 66 town will continue to have its Standin’ on a Corner festival today and Saturday, reports the East Valley Tribune.

The gala and mural are inspired by the Eagles‘ hit song, “Take It Easy,” which contains these famed lyrics written by Jackson Browne: “Well, I’m a’standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, such a fine sight to see / It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford slowin’ down to take a look at me.”

The main draw is the Standin’ on the Corner Park, which is anchored by two pieces of art: A mural depicting the girl in the flatbed Ford by trompe l’oeil artist John Pugh and a bronze statue by sculptor Ron Adamson of a man in 1970s garb standing on the corner.

Pugh’s mural was nearly destroyed in an Oct. 18, 2004, fire, which gutted the interior of the building the mural is painted on. For safety reasons the park was kept cordoned off by a chain-link fence as the landlord and the city debated who was responsible for cleaning up the mess.

Hackler says the park will be open this weekend, and visitors will be able to pose with the bronze statue for photographs. Hotel California, an Eagles cover band, and Mogollon will perform. There will also be a kids zone featuring games.

Just in time for the Halloween season, Kathy Weiser’s massive Legends of America site is touting its large collection of ghost stories and other unexplained phenomena along Route 66, according to a recent press release.

The list includes the haunted Lemp Mansion in St. Louis, the haunted Oatman Hotel, and the notorious Spook Light. They’re all well-researched and worth a read.

UltimateDisney.com has posted a bunch of screen shots from the upcoming Disney-Pixar “Cars” DVD, including a scene from the “Mater and the Ghostlight” short (shown above). Check ‘em out.

The Ghostlight, incidentally, is based on the real-life Spooklight near Route 66 at the Missouri-Oklahoma-Kansas border.

The street date for the DVD version of the hit summer movie that takes place on Route 66 is Nov. 7.

(Hat tip to the Pixar Planet forum.) 

Nearly five months after its groundbreaking ceremony, Pops — an unusual gas station that will lure tourists with a 66-foot-tall soda bottle lit with LEDs out front, a collection of 12,000 soda bottles inside, and an elaborate, futuristic canopy cantilevered over the gas pumps — is beginning to rise from the red Oklahoma dirt in a field near Arcadia.

I popped these shots of the building’s skeleton last Saturday evening.

The gas station, which will also include a soda fountain (of course!) and a grill, is scheduled to open next year. We’ll post occasional updates on its progress as we get them.

– Red Fork Hippie Chick

The Joplin (Mo.) Globe reports that city budget plans include $1 million in spending to promote area tourism.

Included is $63,000 for entryway beautification, which includes Route 66.

Next year, the bureau is looking to construct a sign at the southwest corner of North Florida Avenue and Zora Street that has a Route 66 theme and welcomes people to Joplin, McAfee said.

Joplin (Mo.) Globe columnist Mike Pound reports that Broadway in Joplin, which is part of an old alignment of Route 66, seems to be undergoing a traffic resurgence.

The restaurants along the street are busier, and a promising lunch-only place called the Cobblestone Cafe has opened there.

The cafe, which has been open for three weeks now, is kind of what you would expect to find on a street with a historic past. The famous Route 66 sort of wound its way through and around Broadway, and Ginger said she and her sisters opted to run a family-style diner like those you used to find dotting the Mother Road 40 years ago.

“We serve a lot of home-style family recipes, soups, salads, sandwiches, and we offer a hot-plate special every day,” Ginger said.

So what’s causing the surge in traffic? City of Joplin planning specialist Troy Bolander thinks he knows why.

Troy said Broadway used to be seen mainly as a convenient way to get from Florida Avenue to Main Street, but he said more and more people are using Broadway to get to Range Line and sometimes to avoid Range Line. Regardless, there is more traffic on Broadway than there used to be.

“And the increased traffic makes the properties on Broadway more visible to potential customers,” Troy said.

It’s good to see an old alignment of 66 experiencing an increase in traffic, when the reverse is common.

The Grand Canyon Railway, which starts in the Route 66 town of Williams, Ariz., and takes tourists to the canyon’s South Rim, has been sold to a Colorado firm that runs concessions in the canyon, reports the Phoenix Business Journal.

Xanterra Parks and Resorts hopes to formally close the deal by next month. Max and Thelma Biegert own the historic railway, which they revived in 1988 after a 20-year hiatus. It remains a popular way for families to go to the Grand Canyon.

Dave “Willy” Willman, who alerted me to this story, said on the Route 66 forum that he has a friend who works for Xanterra and that he doesn’t anticipate any major changes with the railway once the sale is completed.

The New Mexico Tourism Department has given out $473,000 in grants through the Federal Highway Administration’s Scenic Byways program for the fiscal year. Here are the grants that affect Route 66, according to Travel Daily News:

• Historic Route 66 Bike and Pedestrian Path Construction in Gallup ($50,000): This joint-use path along the Route 66 Scenic Byway will be Phase One of a larger project. It begins at Toltec Avenue near exit 26 of Interstate 40 and continues west along Route 66 for approximately four miles, terminating near the historic El Rancho Hotel.
• Acoma Sky City Turnouts, Interpretive and Directional Signage ($54,900): The project is located along the two routes (I-40 Exit 102 and I-40 Exit 108), used to access Acoma Sky City from Route 66. Specific turnout locations are Route 66 and Exit 102, the Sky City Scenic Overlook and Enchanted Mesa.

Occasionally, I run into someone who says he was “born on Route 66.” This isn’t meant to be literal; it means the house or hospital where he first breathed life was adjacent to the Mother Road.

But now, there’s now one child in New Mexico who can truly make that “born on 66″ claim.

KOB-TV in Albuquerque reports that a pregnant woman in Edgewood, a small Route 66 town east of the Duke City, went into labor. A sister-in-law was driving her to an Albuquerque hospital when the contractions started to get serious in Tijeras Canyon.

A 911 operator on the driver’s cell phone instructed her to pull off the road. She did — at Tramway and Central Avenue, aka Route 66. A few minutes later, paramedics showed up to help deliver the baby right there in the car.

It turned out well. The mother and baby reportedly are resting and healthy at an Albuquerque hospital. And they’re both going to have one cool story to tell.

One of the best (and funniest) Web sites is Roadside America. Inspired and created by the same people who wrote the classic 1992 book of the same name, it’s a huge Web site about kitschy roadside attractions and is updated regularly.

Roadside America filed recent field reports about two stops on Route 66.  One is about Stewart’s Petrified Wood in Holbrook, Ariz., and the other is Fantastic Caverns in Springfield, Mo. They’re always worth a read.

Two Bureau of Land Management-California employees were honored at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington last week for public land photography, according to the bureau’s newsletter.

One of them was Steve Razo (left in above photo), whose photo of Roy’s in Amboy was one of the recognized images.

Razo’s photo is of a well-preserved section of Route 66 that still provides travelers the experience of the “Mother Road” as it was in the 20’s and 30’s. Roy’s Café was one of the quintessential Route 66 roadside stops in the Mojave Desert.

For a slideshow of the images, go here.

In Part 2 of Oprah Winfrey’s “Oprah & Gayle’s Big Adventure,” the two had been booked for the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Ariz.

Oprah was actually looking forward to having her own suite at the Wigwams.

After spending hours in close quarters, Oprah and Gayle needed some time apart. “I want my own teepee,” Gayle said. “[Oprah and I are] not a couple, despite what you’ve heard. I know it looks a little suspicious right now, America!”

“I want my wigwam on the other end of the village,” Oprah said.

But it didn’t work out that way.

Oprah realized that there weren’t enough teepees to accommodate her production crew—18 total—so she packed up and moved to a nearby motel. “There just weren’t enough wigwams to go around,” she says. “We didn’t want to split up because we were in a strange place.”

Feh. I’m glad Oprah didn’t bail because she didn’t like the accommodations. But Holbrook isn’t exactly a big or intimidating town. I would have sent off the others to a nearby motel and spent a restful night in one of those teepees. Togetherness can take a break for one night.

The latest issue of Route 66 Magazine is out, and it contains these articles for your reading pleasure:

• The cover story is the history of the rise and fall and rise again of Cool Springs Camp, on Oatman Road between Oatman and Kingman. It includes comtemporary and vintage photos, including one in which the camp was “rebuilt” so it could be blown up for a scene in the movie “Universal Soldier.”
• There’s also a feature with lots of photos about the Pacific Atlantic Cycling Tour of Route 66 that went from Santa Monica to Chicago in 29 days. Jim Bradbury, one of the tour’s participants, wrote it.
• A story about Camp Cajon on Cajon Pass north of San Bernardino, Calif. Its owner was Bill Bristol, who built it in 1919 as a rest stop before the arduous trip downhill (or as a breather for those who made it up to the pass).
• Plenty of book and video reviews.

Route 66 Magazine can be found at newsstands in Borders and Barnes & Noble. You can also go to its Web site and subscribe.

In 1963, a Sinclair gas station opened on old Route 66 on 200 E. Baltimore in Wilmington, Ill., featuring the brand’s green brontosaurus that overlooked the station and highway.

Gary Geiss bought the station in 2001 and sought to put a dinosaur back on the building (there’s no word on what happened to the old one). The Kankakee Daily Journal reports that he negotiated with an eBay seller and bought an 80-pound, fiberglass Sinclair dinosaur that’s at least 45 years old and originally was displayed at a station in Chattanooga, Tenn.

The Sinclair dino can be seen here.

Wilmington is now the home of two fiberglass giants — Geiss’ Sinclair dino and the Launching Pad Drive-In’s giant astronaut.

Decades before San Bernardino, Calif., started its humongously popular Route 66 Rendezvous, the city had its Covered Wagon Days, reports historian Nicholas R. Cataldo in the San Bernardino County Sun.

The festival, which paid tribute to the city’s Old West days, started in the 1930s.

For four days in November, there was a covered wagon encampment where participants lived in the wagons in much the same manner and under similar conditions to those that confronted the pioneers when crossing the plains.

Special awards were given to the oldest covered wagon, the most original covered wagon and to the group that presented the best portrayal of pioneer life in the covered wagon camp.

Special courtesies were paid to all residents who had lived in San Bernardino for at least 50 years. A “Half-Century Club” was being formed during the time of the festival, and all old timers were invited to register.

Women were encouraged to wear pioneer-era outfits or risk “jail.” Men also were hauled off to the hoosegow if they didn’t grow a beard. Taverns left their doors open, Old West-style. Horses traveled streets covered in sawdust. Orange Show Stadium hosted two rodeos, and the Municipal Auditorium was the site of Grandpa’s Follies, featuring 12 can-can girls.

The festival drew as many as 125,000 people in the late ’40s. Inexplicably, it lost its luster in the 1950s and faded away.

Too bad. I think reviving Covered Wagon Days on a smaller scale — at the Orange Show grounds, for instance — would be fun and worthwhile.