Touting Tucumcari March 8, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Attractions, Towns.1 comment so far
This is a promotional video created by the Tucumcari-Quay County Chamber of Commerce in Tucumcari, N.M. It touts the town’s Route 66 heritage and other attractions. It’s an excellent video … every bit as good what I’ve seen from much bigger cities.
1 millionth bottle of soda sold at POPS March 7, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Events, Food, Restaurants.add a comment
POPS on Route 66 in Arcadia, Okla., sold its 1 millionth bottle of soda on Saturday afternoon, reported KOKH-TV in Oklahoma City.
Marilyn McIntosh bought the landmark bottle — Round Barn Root Beer, named after the historic Round Barn down the road — as part of a birthday present for her grandson. She won 66 scoops of ice cream, free soda for a year, 66 free burgers and fries, and 2,400 miles’ worth of gasoline.
POPS opened in early August 2007. That means it has averaged 32,000 bottles of soda sold per month, or more than 1,000 per day.
To give you an idea the smashing success POPS has become since it opened, it sold 600,000 bottles of soda in its first year. POPS was projecting 175,000 in its first year. Also, POPS serves between 1,000 and 1,500 customers per day.
“Cars” meets Cadillac Ranch March 7, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Art, Attractions, Movies, Toys, Vehicles.add a comment
Be a little patient when you view this Lego stop-motion animation video. You will eventually see toys from the movie “Cars” being used in a re-creation of Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, Texas.
So is this were Lightning McQueen, Tow Mater and the rest of the Radiator Springs gang go after they die?
Book review: “Route 66 in New Mexico” March 7, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Books, Businesses, History, Motels, Restaurants.1 comment so far
Joe Sonderman is primarily known for two things — as a radio announcer in the St. Louis area, and as a huge collector of Route 66 postcards.
But while reading his latest book, “Route 66 in New Mexico” (soft cover, 128 pages, Arcadia Publishing, $21.99), it occurred to me that Sonderman may have met his best calling — history writer. This is his fourth volume for Arcadia (three of them about Route 66), and an Amazon.com search reveals at least three other history-minded books. And he’s very good at it.
This book begins with a two-page summary of Route 66′s history in New Mexico. Despite its brevity, it’s packed with nuggets that likely will educate even the most veteran roadie. For instance, only 28 miles of the Mother Road’s 506 miles in New Mexico were paved in 1926. Also, one in five traffic fatalities in New Mexico from 1953 to 1958 occurred on U.S. 66.
But “Route 66 in New Mexico” shines when Sonderman combines his well-researched text with his enormous collection of old postcards and vintage photos. Each page contains at least one photo, often two. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for text on the history of a restaurant, motel or landmark, but Sonderman manages.
Here are a few facts from “Route 66 in New Mexico” that many roadies probably won’t know:
- Endee, west of Glenrio, boasted 187 people in 1950. Sixty years later, almost nothing but a roadside privy is left of the settlement.
- One of the Blue Swallow Motel‘s owners in the 1940s died in a plane crash. Floyd Redman took over the Tucumcari motel and later gave it to his wife Lillian Redman. She owned it for the next 40-plus years.
- Harry Harrison, owner of Harry’s Cafe in Tucumcari, gained national fame by being portrayed in a 1948 hit song by Dorothy Slay titled “Two Gun Harry of Tucumcari.”
- A scene from the Oscar-winning “Grapes of Wrath” was filmed on the Pecos River Bridge in Santa Rosa.
- Elephant Rock, a natural landmark near Albuquerque, was bulldozed into a gully during road construction in the 1970s.
- A scene from the Oscar-winning “No Country for Old Men” was shot at the Desert Sands Motel in Albuquerque. The motel’s Room 109 also reportedly is haunted.
- A giant kachina doll once stood near Gallup.
The images that Sonderman used are always fascinating and sometimes amazing. One striking photo of Arrowhead Camp near Glorieta in 1929 shows what looks like Model T parked next to a tiny log cabin. The image is reminiscent of John’s Modern Cabins near Arlington, Mo. Back then, this was considered good lodging at 50 cents a night.
Amazing sights seemed to lurk around the next bend. In the 1940s, neon lighting and art deco architecture were everywhere, including gas stations. In the Land of Enchantment, you might see a restaurant shaped like a sombrero, a gigantic covered wagon near a souvenir shop, or an iceberg-shaped custard stand.
And places were given such colorful names as the Honey Dew Drive Inn and the Nod-A-While Motor Lodge — sometimes, as in this case, in the same block.
A significant number of these businesses and landmarks have been lost to time or redevelopment. But such sadness is tempered by the joy and wonderment of the past that this book brings. Land of Enchantment, indeed.
Highly recommended.
“Real Gone” March 6, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Movies, Music.add a comment
Folks who’ve seen “Cars” or heard its soundtrack know this Sheryl Crow song.
From the Mother Road to the Holy Land March 6, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Attractions, Road trips, Television.3 comments
Here’s a video about Route 66 that appeared last month on an Israeli television program titled “Roim Olam,” or “Watching the World.”
The narration is in Yiddish Hebrew, but I think most will easily follow what’s going on.
Eyal Tavor, an Israeli TV reporter who filed the story, said this in an e-mail:
In autumn 2008 my wife Ruth, myself and our son Daniel (then aged 13) went on a month-long road trip along Route 66. It was the realization of an old dream of mine to travel the Mother Road. Although I grew up in Israel, I’ve always been fond of America and saw Route 66 as a significant American icon: Americana at its best. I was delighted to find out the road authentically preserved the image I have always had in my mind about America, an image which was inspired by many movies and books: endless spaces, remote towns, diners that were frozen in time, vintage motels, roadside attractions and nice people respecting good old values such as diligence, modesty, friendship, and strong contact to the land.
Our Route 66 trip turned to be an unforgettable exciting experience. At some points we were actually able to identify with the old settlers who were travelling west in the hope of finding a better future.
These days I am building an Israeli internet site, the first in Hebrew, about route 66. You will be the first link I will put there.
My purpose is to arouse interest in Route 66 among Israeli people and to encourage them to set out for the road. I am aware of the fact that very few in our country are familiar with the whole story. In many places we visited along the road we were told that we were the first Israelis to ever stop by. Most of our hosts had no recollection of any Hebrew in their guestbooks. The Israeli flag Harley & Annabelle are seen holding was hand- drawn by our son.
(Hat tip: Laurel Kane)
60-second man March 5, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Art, Attractions, Vehicles.add a comment
Here’s a video of someone repainting one of the cars planted into the ground at Cadillac Ranch west of Amarillo, Texas. It serves as a primer (pun intended) for those who want to learn how to repaint their car.
The silence of the trains — for real March 4, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Motels, Railroad, Towns.3 comments
For the first time in more than a century, trains now will go through the Route 66 town of Flagstaff, Ariz., without sounding their warning horns, reported the Arizona Daily Sun.
On Tuesday, trains went through Flagstaff for the first time without blasting their horns. It took several years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, but many residents and overnight guests in the city’s motels now will get a more restful sleep.
Mayor Sara Presler picked up one of the small wooden train whistles given to community leaders to commemorate the silencing of train horns at all five city crossings, only to learn in front of a crowd of more than 100 people that the toy didn’t work.
Presler would later joke that she must have gotten the “quiet zone” train whistle.
An op-ed piece in the Sun today elaborated on the problems with train horns:
But traditions die hard, and it’s taken several decades longer for civic leaders to get over the nostalgia and apply cold, hard logic to the problem.
That calculation has to start with the acknowledgment that trains and their horns aren’t what they used to be. What was once a whistle announcing the arrival of passengers, mail or freight some 30 times a day is now a series of electronically amplified blasts of 110 decibels apiece at each of five crossings. Multiply that by up to 120 trains a day when the economy is good, and, on average, train horns are going off in Flagstaff in multiple bursts along the Route 66 corridor once every 12 minutes — 24/7.
A few train buffs complained, but they’re in a small minority. And one resident argued that only three-fifths of Flagstaff was an actual “quiet zone” because of 78-decibel wayside horns at railroad crossings on the city’s east side.
And I predict the town of Kingman, Ariz., will eventually implement a railroad quiet zone in their town. The complaints against trains are too numerous to ignore.
Notes from the road March 4, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Art, Attractions, Highways, Museums, Photographs, Preservation, Signs, Towns.1 comment so far
An artist's conception of the "East Meets West" sculpture.
The “East Meets West” sculpture at the Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza at Riverside Drive and Southwest Boulevard (aka Route 66) in Tulsa is inching closer to being installed.
Dennis Whitaker at the city of Tulsa gave me this update, via e-mail:
[T]he artist is finished with the car group and the foundry has already cast it. It is ready to be assembled; the wagon grouping is complete except for one horse, the balance of that grouping is at the foundry. Once the artist finishes the horse and has everything at the foundry to be cast, we’ll have an estimate of when it might be delivered.
The main artist, Robert Summers, suffered catastrophic injuries in a fall. It took him months to recover, or else the sculpture would have been installed long before now.
Whitaker also provided this update about the Route 66 museum that will eventually be built at the plaza:
PSA Dewberry will be the lead engineering / architectural firm for the Interpretive Center, but they will have a sub-consultant that specializes in program planning. That is Phase I of the design process – to determine what will be housed in the facility (office, interpretive features, static displays, restaurant etc) and how much space it takes to do that. Phase II will be the architectural design of the footprint, façade, approaches, rooms, spaces etc. which will lead to creation of construction drawings.
The City and the County have entered into a new agreement for the design funds. The City Council has the second reading of the budget amendment ordinance on their agenda tomorrow. Once we have the money in the City’s budget we can enter into a contract with Dewberry.
Both Phases of design, construction bidding and then construction could take 36 months.
— A $180 million Navajo Nation casino north of Interstate 40 near the Twin Arrows exit soon will break ground and be finished next year, reported the Arizona Daily Sun. The development won’t have much direct impact on the historic and abandoned Twin Arrows complex off Route 66, mainly because it is south of I-40. (Hat tip to Bob Moore.)
— A long-vacant building in downtown Waynesville, Mo., is seeing new life, reported the Waynesville Daily Guide. The building, at Benton Street and Route 66, will be used for apartments and Lone Oak Printing Co.
— Claudia Heller’s latest in her ongoing series about Route 66 towns in the Mojave Desert concentrates on one of our favorites, the tiny burg of Ludlow, Calif.
— The Railsplitter Covered Wagon, also known as the world’s largest covered wagon, will be re-dedicated in front of its new home at the Best Western Lincoln Inn in Lincoln, Ill., at 4:30 p.m. March 19, reported the Lincoln Courier. Abe and the wagon were repainted, and plans include a Route 66 Scenic Byway Wayside Scenic Exhibit at the site.
— John Treadwell Dunbar has filed a comprehensive article for the Canada Free Press about the history and attractions of the Route 66 town of Oatman, Ariz.
— Needles Downtown Business Alliance members are installing metal signs and banners trumpeting the California town’s link to Route 66, reported the Needles Desert Star.
— Finally, Gordo at Handcolored66.com sent me this terrific photo of the 9-foot-wide Sidewalk Highway of old Route 66 near Miami, Okla. This recent image was captured at dusk:
___
Revival of hotel building in Tulsa begins March 3, 2010
Posted by Ron Warnick in Businesses, Motels, Preservation.7 comments
The restoration of the historic Max Campbell Building in the 2600 block of East 11th Street, aka Route 66, in Tulsa is starting now.
The purchase of the building and the intentions to convert it into a hotel and retail center was announced in late 2008. But I feared that the project went by the wayside when the economy cratered a short time later.
But a spokeswoman Barbara Casey at Group M Investment Inc., the building’s owner, assured me by e-mail that the renovation work on the Campbell Building was beginning in earnest:
It used to be Casa Loma Hotel in the ’40s on the top (2nd) floor, and Safeway, drug store, barbershop, etc., on bottom floor. We are restoring the hotel. It will be called the Campbell Hotel, as it is the Max Campbell building built in 1927. [...] It is being listed on the Historical Register.
The hotel will have 26 rooms; originally it had 36. We want to make them a little larger, and have a couple of small suites. [...] We would love to have a restaurant on the first floor. We envision something like the Metro Diner. That would be great. We are across the street from Bama Pie and a block from TU, less than 2 miles from Hillcrest and St Johns Hospital, close to downtown, and of course ON HISTORICAL ROUTE 66, so we hope to get a god mix of clientele and retail. And we don’t know when we will be finished. At least a year, I would say.
On a related note, Group M also recently finished its Eleventh Street Lofts project, housed in a former laundry building on 2002 E. 11th St. It has 10 loft apartments for lease, ranging from $950 to $1,325 per month. Here is a photo of the building and one of the lofts:
(Loft photos courtesy of Group M Investments)