Brad Belk of the Joplin Museum Complex is planning the creation of what will be the Jasper County Route 66 Transportation Museum, which will be on the first floor of the Jasper County Courthouse in Carthage, Mo., reports the Carthage Press.

“The consulting contract was approved and we’ll be in the preliminary design phase until April,” Belk said. “We’re planning on having a final design in August.”  [...]

According to the Missouri Department of Transportation, which is administering the grant, the museum will serve as a welcome center for people traveling Route 66.

Belk said he is visiting several other Route 66 museums as part of his preliminary planning to get ideas regarding the displays that should be shown in the Carthage museum.

“We’re going on fact-finding missions,” Belk said. “We’re going to the museum in Elk City and to the national Route 66 Museum in Clinton, both in Oklahoma. Last week we went to Lebanon to see the display in the Laclede County Library. We also interviewed Scott Springer, who rode the length of the road on a bike in 2006 to mark the 80th anniversary of Route 66.”

Belk said at this point in the process he’s just looking for ideas as to what the display should look like.

It seems like Belk is approaching this project the right way. But based on the honors he’s received, I shouldn’t be surprised.

Tucumcari, N.M., artists Doug and Sharon Quarles, best-known for their murals around the Route 66 town, have opened a bed-and-breakfast in a historic home at 307 E. High St. near downtown, according to the Quay County Sun.

The Quarleses’ original art gallery was in the downtown Sands-Dorsey Building, but it burned down last year. They were offered the chance to relocate at the two-story, red sandstone house with decorated wood trim and high ceilings that was built for a railroad engineer in 1907.

The couple rechristened the home as Gallery 111 Bed & Breakfast. Their artwork is displayed in the living and dining rooms, and they have four bedrooms for guests, including one with a Route 66 theme.

An illustration of the home can be seen at the bottom of the Quarleses’ Web page here. They can be contacted by calling 505-461-7891, or by using this contact page here.

A videographer checks out Meteor City in Arizona, which features what purportedly is the world’s longest map of Route 66. There’s another long map of 66 in Winslow, Ariz.

The Meteor City map was painted originally by Route 66 artist Bob Waldmire, but it was repainted some years later. You can see Waldmire’s version here.

The Chicago Children’s Museum is thinking of moving from Navy Pier to a site at Grant Park, which is across the street from the fabled beginning of Route 66.

However, according to the Chicago Tribune, Preservation Chicago wants the museum to find someplace else:

“It’s completely unnecessary to put the museum in a park that has long come to symbolize a rare and magnificent use of urban open space in the heart of downtown,” said Jonathan Fine, president of the non-profit organization that monitors threats to Chicago’s architectural landscape. [...]

Still in the formative stage, the museum had floated a plan to build a subterranean building that would occupy part of a space now used as a garage below the park.

Another site mentioned would put the museum in another part of the park. The plans have drawn citizen outrage and set off a political firestorm.

A museum official said Monday that Preservation Chicago officials miss the point that the project is trying to be as architecturally unobtrusive to the park as possible.

“It blends into the park and the greenery,” said Jim Law, vice president for planning and external affairs at the museum. “We look at this as an adaptive reuse of the park.”

Preservation Chicago has gone as far as listing Grant Park as one of its Seven Most Endangered sites because of the museum proposal.

I’m not sure what to think of this. The museum wants an unobtrusive site, perhaps even underground. Maybe the preservationists think the museum — and the additional people it would draw — would be more problematic for the park’s ambiance than anticipated.

(Hat tip: The Lope.)

The sprawl in the Los Angeles metro area is so extensive that one is tempted to describe San Bernardino, Calif., as simply one of its many suburbs.

It may surprise some that San Bernardino was founded in 1810 and was incorporated just three years after the City of Angels. With more than 200,000 people, San Bernardino remains one of the largest cities on Route 66. And Arcadia Publishing’s newest addition to its Postcard History Series, “San Bernardino” by Steven Shaw (128 pages, $19.99), helps flesh out San Bern’s colorful history with black-and-white images.

With a compact introductory history of the city written by current Mayor Patrick J. Morris, Shaw’s collection of hundreds of postcards serves as an informal retrospective of San Bernardino. You see early images of Third Street, which remains one the city’s main arteries (and eventually carried a portion of Route 66). You see photos of trains and railroad depots, when the city was a major rail center. A few postcards show the famed natural arrowhead formation on the San Bernardino Mountains.

San Bern also held a love-hate relationship with water. Mountain streams and natural springs made the city an oasis from the Mojave Desert and powered its rise as a producer of oranges. But flooding also was a chronic problem, especially a ruinous deluge in 1938 that was documented by a few postcards.

“San Bernardino” gives a few pages to the Mother Road. Images of vintage Route 66 businesses include the Wigwam Motel, Motel San Bernardino, Mount Vernon Auto Motel, Mission Auto Court, Orange Blossom Motel, Sleepy Hollow Auto Court and the Gate City Auto Court (seen above).

But my favorite section contains images from the long-running National Orange Show. Undoubtedly inspired by the Tournament of Roses Parade in nearby Pasadena, the industry showcase featured ornate structures built of fruit. Citrus sculptures included a train, stagecoach, a chariot, the local courthouse, and the base for a Statue of Liberty that, in total, was nearly 30 feet tall. It seemed the show’s organizers were determined to one-up each other every year, and hundreds of thousands of spectators attended each year to witness it.

Shaw’s text with the photos is consistently interesting and informative. My only complaint is he seldom lets readers know the fate of some of these great old structures of yesteryear. Perhaps it’s a little too depressing to know.

It’s also somewhat unfortunate that a few of the postcard images weren’t printed in color, especially those from the Orange Show. But this undoubtedly would have raised the printing costs considerably.

Recommended.

(”San Bernardino” is available at area bookstores, independent retailers, online bookstores, or through Arcadia Publishing at www.arcadiapublishing.com or 888-313-2665.)

“Unknown Legend” isn’t one of Neil Young’s biggest hits, but it a favorite among motorcycle riders. And why not? It’s got diners, Harley Davidsons and a certain highway sign in the background.

Carol Stark, editor of the Joplin (Mo.) Globe, talked to Vincent Lindstrom, the new director of the Joplin Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Most chamber and tourism folks usually take an “everything is beautiful” tone with the local media. But Lindstrom seems willing to address the area’s weaknesses (with the bold type as my emphasis).

With Route 66 running right through the town and a number of Civil War battlefields in the area, Lindstrom believes history buffs need to put Joplin on their travel agendas.

I might stop here and tell you that even though Lindstrom’s title has the word Joplin in it, he is very much a believer in regional cooperation. He wisely notes that tourists don’t know where the city limits end and neither should he.

So, what could Joplin be doing better? Lindstrom believes our town could make a better first impression, but he gives the city big creds on what it’s done from First Street to Seventh Street.

He thinks we make it too hard for tourists to navigate. He sees a signage program as a big need.

He thinks that Missouri Southern State University could offer up a world of resources and says a closer relationship between the city and the university is needed.

Lindstrom quickly admits that “quiet” is not his strong suit.

Hmm. Apparently he’s not the only one who thinks tourism signs are lacking in that part of Missouri.

The Mohave Daily News has a wrapup story about the 17th annual Great Oatman Bed Race in Oatman, Ariz., on Saturday.

Oatman, a little Route 66 town nestled in the Black Mountains, periodically holds these goofy but lovable contests, including a sidewalk egg-frying event on the Fourth of July.

The Mohave Family Health Care team won first place. If someone on their team got injured, there wasn’t far to go for a doctor. The News West team finished second.

And even though it had been the team’s first year, Pynakker joked they’d soon start practicing for next year.

“It was way harder than it looks. We’re not in shape, so…,” she said, trailing off. “We’re going to hit Mad Dog [Fitness] on Monday.”

Well, not everyone on a bed-racing squad has to use athletic prowess. After all, one member has the slacker duty of simply reclining on the mattress while the others do the heavy pushing.

That doesn’t mean you can eat Oreos with impunity, however — there’s no sense in gaining weight and making the race harder for your teammates.

Heather Clark of the Associated Press takes a look at the Route 66 town of Grants, N.M., which is undergoing a boom of economic activity again because of a rise in uranium prices.

With uranium prices approaching $100 a pound, it’s anticipated that Uranium Resources Inc. will create the nation’s largest uranium mill and draw 4,000 jobs. Other companies have exploration permits in the area.

Some residents are wary of uranium companies coming back into town. Many former mine workers are having trouble getting treatment for work-related illnesses. And the previous boom-to-bust cycle has made locals tentative about the current upsurge.

It’s a good story about a town that’s too dependent on one industry, but doesn’t know what else to do.

Here’s Joe DiVeglia playing “Route 66″ on an old upright piano, in quite a bit of a New Orleans style.

In this old clip from “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson, here’s the Manhattan Transfer performing “Route 66.”

This was during Eric Clapton’s Tulsa period, in which all his road musicians were from Tulsa. This song was written by a Tulsan, too, by the name of J.J. Cale.

Here’s another road song from Jackson Browne, and it’s probably his best-known. He’s got a little help, circa 1982.

Ron, aka merkywave, of Albuquerque lists himself as a locksmith. Not only can he pick locks, but he can pick guitar, as this country blues version of “Route 66″ shows.

The old Fifth Street Bridge that carried Route 66 over Interstate 215 in San Bernardino, Calif., is going to be demolished soon, making way for a new Fifth Street bridge. It’s part of a long-planned I-215 widening project.

However, people will have the opportunity to take pieces of it home as a Route 66 souvenir, reports the San Bernardino County Sun.

“We’re going to chip up some pieces of the bridge, little chunks … and put them in plastic cube boxes with a label on it,” said Jane Dreher, spokeswoman for San Bernardino Associated Governments. “We’re going to have some photographs of the old bridge when it was being constructed in 1959.”

On Feb. 1, Sanbag, the county’s regional transportation agency, will host a tour of the site at 10 a.m. and pieces of the old bridge will be handed out.

The bridge was a fairly nondescript-looking structure, which fits in the time when it was built. Images of the old bridge can be seen in this pdf documents here and here.

The new bridge can be seen in artist’s rendering here. I have to say the new bridge looks marginally better.

Those who got soaked by rainstorms last year during the annual Fire and Ice Bike Rally in Grants, N.M., will be happy to hear that officials plan to build a Route 66 Pavilion to provide festivalgoers and entertainers shelter from future inclement weather, reports the Cibola County Beacon.

The current plan is to build the 60-foot by 125-foot structure out of wood. Clay tiles will be used on the roof so the structure will be similar in appearance to the post office and gazebo, which are both nearby. The covered square footage of the structure will be 5,950 square feet and will provide 1,860 square feet of shaded area. Not only will building the pavilion be more aesthetically pleasing, the cost will be less than if the structure was metal.

The pavilion will incorporate park benches and trees and provide a stable foundation for community events.

An artist’s conception of the project can be seen with the story link.

Local officials will have to deal with issues like funding and drainage. There’s no timetable of when the pavilion, if approved, will be finished.

A grave marker for Brownie, a dog at the Victorville, Calif., railroad depot that greeted soldiers coming home from World War II, will be moved to the California Route 66 Museum, reports the Victorville Daily Press.

The marker is being moved because Forrest Park, where it sits, is being torn down.

Brownie apparently was a stray dog who showed up one day at the depot and never left. He was essentially adopted and cared for by railroad employees.

“I remember the dog well,” says Shirley Davisson, whose father worked for the railroad. “He was just a mongrel. A smaller-type, little tan dog.”

Davisson played with the dog when he came by to visit his father or deliver a message.

“Everybody stopped and played with him. He was real friendly.”  [...]

Brownie was at the station 24 hours a day, Davisson says, until he was run over by a train and killed in 1945.

The employees who had taken care of the dog then took up a collection for a stone to mark his grave.

One Roadside America correspondent gave a bit more history about Brownie:

Dog faithfully met every Santa Fe train’s crew coming up from the treacherous El Cajon summit, and they threw him meat cooked on the caboose stove. Wouldn’t allow passengers dogs in “his” station, until eventually poor pooch was ironically run down by his beloved 5:15.

Another correspondent gives another possible reason why the grave marker is going to be moved:

Please exercise caution in Forrest Park. It is rapidly becoming a very bad area, and if you want to stop and see the grave, beware of your surroundings and keep an eye on your fellow “park users” at all times. I would not advise going alone, or wearing anything that looks flashy or expensive (including your camera). There have been a lot of altercations and disturbances there lately.

The marker says: “Brownie — A railroad dog. A friend and a pal. 1945″.

This is a group called the Yankee Dogs, performing “Route 66.”

It’s rock. It’s country. It’s blues. It’s jazz. It’s all of that.

There are many libraries across the country that are 100 years old or older.

But the one in Atlanta, Ill., is distinct. First, it sports an unusual octagon shape.

Second, it not only serves as a library, but also as the town’s historical museum, which includes Route 66.

The Atlanta library turns 100 in March. The Bloomington Pantagraph has the story.

This is the United Kingdom trailer for the Wong Kar Wai film, “My Blueberry Nights.” I used it because it’s about a minute longer than the other trailers out there, and you get a better feel for the director’s visual sense. The road-trip film reportedly takes place in several Route 66 diners.

It’s scheduled for limited release on Feb. 13 in North America. Critics on the Rotten Tomatoes site have given the movie warm but somewhat mixed reviews.

It stars Rachel Weisz, Natalie Portman, Jude Law, David Strathairn and popular jazz musician Norah Jones.