I knew Ryan Thompson had purchased the Fanning 66 Outpost near Cuba, Missouri, a little less than two years ago, and he was busy making dozens of types of flavored popcorn for visitors.
What I didn’t know was Fanning 66 Outpost has become a miniature version of Pops in Arcadia, Oklahoma. It offers more than 300 varieties of soda — including 54 types of root beer — along with recently becoming an official seller of Route 66 Sodas.
The 300 sodas isn’t close to the 500 at Pops, but it’s still impressive.
Thompson provided background on the changes at Fanning 66 Outpost since he took it over:
We didn’t get the liquor license and instead have 295 glass bottle sodas, We rotate 75 flavors of fudge and 200 flavors of gourmet popcorn all made on site. We are continually told nobody had the selection of 66 gear we carry! It’s been a blast to say the least. Harley listed us on their national scavenger hunt after we repainted the chair so that’s brought a lot of bikers! We just got our first round of Eagle Riders for the season. We stay open Sunday’s now through October for them!
The Route 66 Soda distribution just made sense. We sell a ton of it, and the previous owner that was doing it had no time to grow the line in Missouri as he was driving 7 hours just to us. They had only 12 accounts in the state. […]
We sell popcorn and our merchandise all over the world to visitors that get home and can’t find anything like it and to people that have traveled through and see our new posts. We are having a blast, to say the least! Excited that the season is here.
As for the large rocking chair on the side of the property that once was the world’s largest, Thompson said he’d replaced its rotted wood. He investigated the idea of making it larger — presumably to take back the Guinness record held by a rocking chair in Illinois — but engineers nixed it, saying it would have required rebuilding the entire structure from scratch. The current rocking chair was built proportionally, so making any part of it bigger would have compromised its structure.
The rocking chair stands 42 feet tall, more than 20 feet wide and weighs 27,000 pounds. The chair can rock, but nearly all the time it remains welded down for safety reasons.
Dan Sanazaro opened Fanning 66 Outpost in 2007 as a feed store, hunting-supplies outlet and all-purpose souvenir shop. Sanazaro built the World’s Largest Rocker a year later to draw curious travelers.
Fanning 66 Outpost closed in August 2016 “due to economic conditions.” Thompson bought the property and reopened it the following summer.
(Illustrated image of Fanning 66 Outpost via Facebook; image of Route 66 Sodas at Fanning 66 Outpost courtesy of Ryan Thompson)