Route 66 turns 100 and Arizona is throwing the biggest party on the highway

America’s longest stretch of the Mother Road

Arizona holds 385 miles of the original Route 66, more than any other state. That number alone doesn’t tell you much, but the drive will.

You pass through high desert, pine forest, volcanic mountains, and canyons carved over millions of years, all on a road that runs parallel to Interstate 40 so you can dip in and out as you please.

And in 2026, the highway hits its 100th birthday, which means the towns along it are throwing a year-long party.

A wagon path that became America’s most famous road

Before Route 66 existed, the ground it follows had already carried foot traffic for centuries.

Native American trade routes and U.S. Army survey trails ran along the 35th parallel long before any federal highway planner showed up.

When the government officially created Route 66 in 1926, it stitched together older paths into a single road running 2,400 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles.

After World War II, car ownership exploded and family road trips became a national ritual. By 1984, the last Arizona stretch was bypassed by Interstate 40, and the highway lost its official status in 1985.

The barber who refused to let the road die

When Interstate 40 bypassed Seligman in 1978, the traffic that had kept the town alive simply stopped coming. Angel Delgadillo watched it happen from his barbershop.

In 1987, he and other business owners along the corridor formed the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona.

That same year, Arizona made the stretch from Seligman to Kingman the first officially designated “Historic Route 66” in the country.

The push spread to all eight states the road passes through and set off a revival that’s still running today. Now in his late 90s, Delgadillo goes by a name the road gave him: the Guardian Angel of Route 66.

Sleep inside a concrete teepee in Holbrook

Holbrook is where you stay in a room shaped like a teepee.

The Wigwam Motel went up in 1950, and the 15 concrete structures still have their original handmade hickory furniture inside. The motel made the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

Just east of town, Petrified Forest National Park sits directly on Route 66, the only national park that can claim that.

Inside, you’ll find wood that turned to stone over 200 million years, the sweeping color of the Painted Desert, and the restored Painted Desert Inn, a 1920s pueblo-style landmark that’s been part of this road since the beginning.

Stand on a corner in Winslow and feel like you know the song

The Eagles recorded “Take It Easy” in 1972, and the second verse drops Winslow by name. Jackson Browne and Glenn Frey wrote it, and the town ran with it.

Standin’ on the Corner Park opened in 1999 with a bronze statue, a mural by John Pugh, and a red flatbed Ford parked on the street like it’s been there all along.

After Glenn Frey died in 2016, a second statue went up in his honor.

Tens of thousands of people stop here every year, and what started as a lyric has become one of the most visited spots on the Arizona corridor.

Flagstaff sits at 7,000 feet and the sky is the whole point

The San Francisco Peaks rise above Flagstaff, and the city sits at their base at about 7,000 feet.

More than 22 miles of Route 66 run through town, lined with neon motel signs and diners that look like they belong in a 1950s photograph.

In 2001, Flagstaff became the world’s first International Dark Sky City, and 2026 marks 25 years since that designation. Lowell Observatory, which has been open since 1894, is where astronomers discovered Pluto in 1930.

You can still go there at night and look through the telescopes. A free self-guided walking tour covers the historic downtown.

Williams was the last Route 66 town to give up the fight

On Oct. 13, 1984, Interstate 40 bypassed Williams, and Route 66 was done in Arizona. Williams held on longer than any other town.

It sits at 6,770 feet inside the Kaibab National Forest, and its downtown, much of it on the National Register of Historic Places, still looks like the mid-20th century never fully left.

The Grand Canyon Railway leaves from here on a 65-mile ride to the South Rim.

If you want to get to the canyon without adding to the parking lot chaos up top, this is how the road suggests you do it.

Seligman is where the whole revival started

About 450 people live in Seligman, but the town carries more Route 66 history than places ten times its size.

Angel Delgadillo’s former barbershop is now a gift shop, and it draws visitors from all over the world who come specifically to meet him or buy a postcard from the place where the movement began.

His brother Juan built the Snow Cap Drive-In in 1953, and the place still runs on prank menus, playful signs, and classic burgers.

Vintage cars, murals, and neon signs line the old highway through town, and Seligman marks the eastern edge of the longest surviving continuous section of Route 66.

The open desert between Seligman and Kingman

There’s a stretch of old highway between Seligman and Kingman that feels like the road hasn’t changed since 1960.

You pass through Peach Springs, the capital of the Hualapai Nation and a gateway to the western Grand Canyon, then through Truxton and Valentine, small communities that barely register on a map.

The Hackberry General Store, built in 1934 as a gas station and grocery, now works as a roadside museum surrounded by vintage cars and old gas pumps.

Route 66 artist Bob Waldmire brought it back to life in 1992, and it’s been pulling people off the highway ever since.

Kingman keeps the road’s history in a former power plant

The building that now holds Kingman’s Powerhouse Visitor Center went up between 1907 and 1909.

The Arizona Route 66 Museum opened inside in 2001, and it walks you through the highway’s history with murals, photos, and life-size displays.

Out in the parking lot, the Route 66 Drive-Thru Shield has become one of the most photographed spots on the corridor.

Cross the street and you can climb up into the cab of a Santa Fe Railway steam engine sitting in Locomotive Park. Kingman’s historic downtown counts more than 40 sites on the National Register of Historic Places.

Wild burros own the main street in Oatman

Oatman is a gold mining town that the mines left behind, and the burros stayed.

When miners released their pack animals after the mines closed, the animals went nowhere in particular and eventually made Main Street their territory. They roam freely, and people feed them.

The Oatman Hotel survived a fire in 1921 and carries the story of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, who reportedly spent time there after their 1939 wedding.

Every day on the main street, a Wild West shootout reenactment goes on as it has for years, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors to a town that almost nobody remembers existed.

One hundred years and Arizona is not letting it pass quietly

Route 66 was officially established on Nov. 11, 1926, which means 2026 is the full century mark. Communities along the Arizona corridor are running centennial events from one end of the year to the other.

The Route 66 Fun Run, the oldest Route 66 celebration anywhere in the country, goes from Seligman to Topock every May.

On June 6, Flagstaff hosts a centennial celebration with a classic car show, art installations, and free bus tours along the road. The highway turns 100 once.

This is the year to drive it.

Drive Arizona’s Route 66 corridor

To travel Arizona’s full Route 66 corridor, you start near Lupton at the New Mexico border and head west through Holbrook, Winslow, Flagstaff, Williams, Seligman, Kingman, and Oatman, finishing just west of Kingman.

The drive runs about seven hours straight through, but nobody does it that way. Most people take at least three days.

Flagstaff is the largest city on the route and a practical base for side trips to the Grand Canyon. All of these towns sit close to Interstate 40, so you can pick up and join the old road whenever you’re ready.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

Read more from this brand:

• Winslow, Arizona has a meteorite crater, a rescued hotel, and the Eagles lyric that started it all
• A two-hour train ride through Arizona gets you to the Grand Canyon without touching a car
• The Arizona barber who refused to let Route 66 die, and saved a whole town doing it