Route 66: Oklahoma Places

Drive three miles east of Luther on U.S. 66, and you will arrive at a quiet intersection where old Route 66 and Pottawatomi Road meet at right angles. The historic Threatt Filling Station, an early gas station that catered to African American travelers along Route 66, is difficult to miss. It’s the only building there.

Seven miles east of the Oklahoma and Texas border, the town of Erick sits on the edge of the high plains of the Panhandle surrounded by arid countryside. Built to support vacationers and other automobile travelers along Route 66 in 1948, the West Wind Motel’s white stucco buildings with red mansard roofs created a bright presence in Erick. The motel was in a good location to capture the business of travelers on Route 66.

In the fall of 1930, Phillips Petroleum Company purchased a property near downtown Tulsa at the corner of Sixth and Elgin Streets and replaced a two-story home with a gas station in 1931.

Between 1934 and 1937, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration helped employ out-of-work citizens of Clinton, Oklahoma with the construction of McLain Rogers Park.

The Lake Overholser Bridge in Oklahoma City is a proud reminder of Route 66. During the early 1920s, automobiles were replacing horses and buggies on Oklahoma roads which, at that time, were not part of an organized system but were instead an assortment of poorly maintained lanes connecting rural villages to county seats. Navigating from one part of Oklahoma to another was not always easy.

A Greek temple with motor oil on the floor? A service station that’s mostly porch? A house with gas pumps out front instead of rocking chairs? Take your pick. The Miami Marathon Station is a little of each. The building is significant as a fine example of the Neoclassical Revival style “house with canopy” gas station and for the role it played in commerce along Route 66.

Driving along the old alignment of Route 66 in the western Oklahoma town of El Reno, travelers will come to a sharp turn at the corner of Wade and Choctaw where two very distinctive reminders of the service station business along Route 66 remain. Both businesses began in the 1930s, a favorable time when the paving of Oklahoma Route 66 west of Oklahoma City neared completion.

Sitting atop a low terrace overlooking the Deep Fork River, the Round Barn in Arcadia has been a center of community activity and curiosity for over a century.

Among the highlights of Chandler’s Route 66 landscape is the Chandler Armory, behind which stands the only brick outhouse in Oklahoma, thought to have been built between 1903 and 1912 and still containing its original French fixture. The Chandler Armory is an excellent example of Works Progress Administration (WPA) architecture; it is rich with history.

Cafes, motels, and gas stations were the backbone of the Route 66 economy. The Chelsea Motel--modest and now abandoned, with paint peeling off its once-white walls--is evidence of that vibrant period when Route 66 helped transform the social and economic landscape of Middle America.