A Route 66 logo soon will be painted on an alignment of Route 66 through Carthage, Mo., to help travelers navigate through town, according to the Joplin Globe.
The council endorsed a recommendation of the city’s public works committee to stencil a Route 66 logo on Garrison Avenue between Central and Oak streets.
“That would provide a clear view of Route 66 through that part of town,” said Tom Short, city administrator. […]
“But sometimes people will miss the turn onto Oak Street, so this will have pavement stenciling and probably some turn arrows, so people won’t get lost,” Short said.
The work will be completed this spring.
UPDATE: A story in the Carthage Press makes it clear that the road-surface stencils and new road signs will be used in conjunction with existing blue-and-white Route 66 byway signs.
The original route in Carthage follows Central Avenue, Garrison Avenue and Oak Street, but before the new blue Route 66 markers were installed last summer, out-of-towners, especially those traveling west, would continue west on Central Avenue and west on Missouri Highway 171 and miss about eight miles of the original road between Carthage and Carterville.
The new blue signs, including a left turn arrow on westbound Central at Garrison and on eastbound Oak Street at Garrison solved part of that problem, but until this week, there sill was no large sign telling drivers to turn right on to Oak Street if they were going west or right on Central if they were going east.
The new street signs on Garrison are one solution. Short said the city was hoping to borrow another possible solution from Webb City.
He said the city was making arrangements to borrow a stencil from Webb City to paint the Route 66 shield on Garrison Avenue.
The bad part is Carthage cannot paint stencils on Missouri Highway 96, aka Route 66, because it’s under Missouri Department of Transportation jurisdiction.
For a community that has so much rich Route 66 history, you would think they would have done this years ago. They (the City) even turned down free signs (including Scenic Byways signs) that would have marked the turn west from Garrison onto Oak Street, and disregarded a plea from the curator of the Powers Museum for directional signage made over three years ago! Go figure.