One of Oklahoma’s staunchest good roads advocates was Cyrus Avery of Tulsa. Avery played a key role in the national and statewide initiatives to promote the Good Roads movement, serving on the board of highway booster organizations, as Tulsa County Commissioner, as the first chairperson of the State Highway Commission of Oklahoma, and as a member of the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO, the predecessor organization to the present-day American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO)).

His roles as the chairperson of the State Highway Commission of Oklahoma and as an AASHO member positioned him for a key role on the committee to designate and number a national system of highways from existing thoroughfares and to adopt a standardized system of signs and markers for the roads. Avery and the rest of the committee appointed by the United States Secretary of Agriculture (the federal Bureau of Public Roads was under the Secretary’s authority at that time) were faced with a substantial task of determining which of the 250 marked trails across the United States would be included in the national system. The committee worked with highway departments, and the highway departments, in turn, worked with booster groups and local officials to map the proposed routes. Ultimately, the process resulted in approval of a national highway system with 75,884 miles of primarily existing paved roadways.

As an Oklahoman on the committee, Avery had substantial influence over the routes designated in his home state. Avery and committee representatives from Illinois and Missouri collaborated to identify a route that traversed the Middle West and ended at the Pacific Coast in California. This route was the exception to the development of the national highway system in that it did not follow only one established historic highway. Avery strongly believed that a highway should be routed through Oklahoma, particularly through his hometown of Tulsa and through the State Capital of Oklahoma City, for the benefit of all Oklahomans. It was also an exception in that it would not run north-south or east-west as all the others would, but rather would run generally northeast to southwest. Despite some strong opposition from other states’ committee members, Avery and his fellow supporters succeeded in getting the approval to include their proposed route in the highway system.

Once the process to establish the highway system was completed, the process of numbering them began. After much controversy and negotiation over the numbering system, the decisions about how to number the new national highway system, including U.S. Highway 66, were finally settled in 1926. The Secretary of Agriculture accepted the national highway system, and it was formally adopted into federal law in November 1926. The Oklahoma State Highway Commission officially designated U.S. Highway 66 in Oklahoma on December 7, 1926.

In Oklahoma City, the original alignment of U.S. Highway 66 entered the city from the northeast on N. Kelley Avenue, went south to the former Grand Boulevard (present-day Interstate Highway (I-) 44), turned west for approximately one-half mile, then turned south on Lincoln Boulevard. It went south on Lincoln Boulevard to the State Capitol at 23rd Street and turned west again. The route followed N.W. 23rd Street west to Classen Boulevard and turned north/northwest. It followed Classen Boulevard to N.W. 39th Street, where it then turned west to follow N.W. 39th Street out of the Oklahoma City limits to Bethany and continued generally due west to the Pacific Coast.35 These original alignments through Oklahoma City would be used until 1930 when the first realignment was made.

Upon designation of U.S. Highway 66, the State Highway Department initiated efforts to pave the unpaved segments of the highway across the state, and to upgrade other segments. The Route 66 Association, led by Cyrus Avery, who had become known as the Father of Route 66, was also established as an organization of business owners along the highway to promote it. It was during the association’s first meeting the highway was dubbed “The Main Street of America” for promotional purposes.

This tag line was used in a variety of ways over time. One of the ways was in The Daily Oklahoman’s regular column updating readers on the current road conditions and paving status for the state’s highways. The subheading for the U.S. Highway 66 section included “The Main Street of America” in it. One advertising example was a full-page advertisement for a group of businesses located between Robinson and Broadway in Oklahoma City.

The banner line reads, “Greetings from Busiest Community Center on Main Street of America.” The 1927 advertisement includes a panoramic photograph of the row of businesses on the north side of N.W. 23rd Street. The listed businesses included the Macklanburg-Duncan Co., Building Specialties Co., La Vina Barber Shop, Goodpasture’s Lunch (listed at 117 N.W. 23rd Street), Piggly Wiggly, Pette Hardware Company, and U-Save Store and General Offices. The advertisement indicates the row of businesses had opened the week before the December 25, 1927, advertisement was published. Of the buildings shown in the photograph, it appears that 119 and 133 N.W. 23rd Street are extant today (although they appear to have been significantly altered over time). Another promotional example was in the 1929 advertisement using “The Main Street of America” to help describe the business’s location when the Schmitt Super Service Station’s new building at N.W. 23rd Street and N. Broadway Avenue was announced.

The State Highway Department’s primary focus for the newly designated U.S. Highway 66 was getting the entire length of the highway in the state paved as quickly as possible and upgrading sections that had fallen into disrepair due to lack of maintenance. Prior to U.S. Highway 66’s designation, the State Highway Department had established a standard for a minimum roadway width of 18 feet within an 80-foot-wide right-of-way. The minimum width was increased to 20 feet within an 100-foot-wide right-of-way in 1930. Portland concrete or asphalt over a concrete base were also established as the preferred paving materials. In Oklahoma City, the streets designated as U.S. Highway 66 were generally already paved, due in large part to the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce’s initiatives. However, the state’s last stretch of Route 66 was not paved until 1937.

On the heels of the highway’s designation, a major event that would come to have substantial, longlasting effects on the city’s economy occurred – the discovery of oil in the Oklahoma City field in late 1928. Practically overnight, the city became a central hub for numerous oil and gas companies.

In the decade between 1920 and 1930, the city’s population more than doubled with an increase to 185,389 residents sparking another construction boom in the city. Additionally, the city saw an increase in the number of vehicles passing through. In 1926, the traffic count for a point north of  the state capitol was 3,362 vehicles; it increased to 7,365 by 1930.42 As the Oklahoma City field was developed, the landscape surrounding the state capitol, including the N. Lincoln Boulevard corridor designated as U.S. Highway 66, became dominated by oil derricks and associated equipment.

In contrast to the positive effects of the discovery of oil, the stock market crash of 1929 and the resultant Great Depression in the 1930s, as well as the drought and severe dust storms, known as the Dust Bowl, of the mid-1930s, had deleterious effects for many Oklahomans. Oklahoma City’s economy was not as severely impacted as were other locations, however, due to the oil and associated construction booms that began just two years before the onset of the Great Depression.

At the height of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, Oklahoma City businesses along Route 66 offered gas and other automobile services, food, and lodging to travelers from rural Oklahoma migrating via the highway to California in search of better opportunities. Tourist camps often became temporary homes for the migrants as they lingered in one place as long as allowed before moving to the next as they made their way west.43 Written in 1938, John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath told the story of the migrants’ plight traveling across Route 66 from Oklahoma to California in search of a better way of life during the era of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. This was, perhaps, the first time Americans saw the now infamous highway as something more important than just a mere roadway.

While the city fared this time period relatively well when compared to other locations within the state and across the country, it still benefitted from some of the federal relief programs, as well as state-level programs, that were implemented to provide employment for the unemployed. For example, the Oklahoma National Guard Armory located along Route 66 just west of the state capitol was constructed under Governor Ernest Whitworth Marland’s state-level work relief program. The building did not have a direct association with Route 66, but it was sited at the time of its construction in 1938 to be located on one of the city’s primary highways.

In the early 1930s, the State Highway Department and Oklahoma City officials made the first of several realignments of, and additions to, Route 66 in the city due to its growth. As previously mentioned, the original alignment traversed Classen Boulevard from N.W. 23rd Street north to N.W. 39th Street and then turned west again. The first realignment moved the highway designation from Classen Boulevard to Western Avenue. Since the Classen Boulevard corridor developed during the street railway era, widening for additional automobile travel would have been constrained by the existing development along the corridor. Based on review of the 1922 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, the Western Avenue corridor was more sparsely developed and likely did not yet have as much traffic as Classen Boulevard would have already been experiencing. Not long after the road’s first realignment, the second realignment moved Route 66 from Western Avenue between N.W. 23rd Street and N.W. 39th Street west to N. May Avenue between N.W. 23rd Street and N.W. 39th Street. Additionally, the new “Beltline” route, which served as a bypass around the north and northwest side of Oklahoma City, was designated around the same time. The Beltline route extended from N. Kelley Street along Britton Road west, through the former city of Britton to N. Western Avenue. From the Britton Road and N. Western Avenue intersection, the alignment turned south to follow N. Western Avenue to N.W. 39th Street where it then turned west to join the original alignment. In 1935, there was also a proposal to widen N.W. 36th Street from N. Western Avenue to a point west of Bethany so that Route 66 could be rerouted onto N.W. 36th Street from N.W. 39th Street. It does not appear from the research that this rerouting was completed, however, and no information on the reasons was identified.

As previously mentioned, the Beltline route passed through the heart of the former city of Britton. Platted in the late nineteenth century, Britton was a stop on the Santa Fe Railroad and had a well-established commercial district by the time the main east-west road through the city – Britton Road – was designated as part of the Route 66 Beltline alignment in 1931. Designation of the Beltline route and general oil field activity in the area during that time spurred additional commercial development, particularly auto-related services (several of which were extant at the time this historic context was developed within Britton. The Owl Court Tourist Court, located at 742 W. Britton Road, is one example of an auto-related businesses established in Britton after the Beltline route was established. Unlike Britton, which experienced growth after the Beltline route was designated, the areas east of Britton along Britton Road and along N. Kelley Road from its intersection with Britton Road north to U.S. Highway 77 experienced little growth and remains relatively rural in nature. The Beltline route maintained its designation until 1953 when the new Route 66 Bypass was constructed. Around the same time the Route 66 Bypass was constructed, Oklahoma City annexed the city of Britton.

During the 1930s, accommodations for travelers began evolving from primarily hotels located near railroads or in downtown cores and the tourist camps previously discussed to also include tourist homes, cabin camps, and cottage or tourist courts. Tourist homes generally entailed a rented room in a private home. Cabin camps were typically facilities with camping spaces like the auto camps provided, as well as small cabins and bathroom buildings. The cottage or tourist courts were a version of the cabin camps where the cabins included attached carports for the travelers’ automobiles. In some cases, the cabins were attached with the carports between the cabins; in other cases, the cabins with carports were stand-alone buildings. It was common for owners of gas stations or stores to add the cabin camps and cottage or tourist courts to their property as they did not require a large capital outlay to construct them. Postcards of tourist courts such as the Jackson Courts illustrate these early accommodations. Despite the rapid rise in popularity and their commonality in the 1930s, surviving examples of tourist courts are rare today. In fact, only one extant example along Route 66 in Oklahoma City - the Owl Court Tourist Court located at 742 W. Britton Road - was identified in the 2020 windshield survey conducted in conjunction with the preparation of this historic context. Just as the mom-and-pop accommodations industry experienced an upswing during this time, so did the restaurants, gas stations, and automobile service stations. Existing businesses expanded and new ones were opened all along Route 66, including in Oklahoma City. This was also a period when national and regional gas companies began constructing “branded” gas and service stations. An example of this is the former Phillips 66 “cottage style” gas station at the northwest corner of N.W. 23rd Street and N. Hudson Avenue.

In the era of Jim Crow laws enforcing racial segregation prior to the Civil Rights movement, a travel guide provided information to Black travelers on accommodations, gas and service stations, and restaurants in major cities across the country. Known originally as the Negro Motorist Green Book and later renamed The Travelers’ Green Book Guide for Travel & Vacations, this guide was organized by state and city, and listed the name, type, and address for each business that served Black travelers. While the businesses were sometimes located along major transportation corridors in cities, that was not the case for Route 66 in Oklahoma City.

A review of various issues published between 1937 and 1966 revealed the listed businesses in Oklahoma City were primarily clustered in the area east of downtown along the 200 to 900 blocks of N.E. 2nd Street and the 400 to 1000 blocks of N.E. 4th Street. One listed motel – the former Luster’s Modern Motel - was located northeast of downtown at 3402 N.E. 23rd Street. Little remains today of the listed businesses as many have been replaced by new residential construction in the area known as Deep Deuce or have been demolished and the parcels are now vacant. In the 2020 windshield survey, only two listed businesses in the downtown area, which are located at 322 and 601 N.E. 2nd Street, were confirmed as extant. The former Luster’s Modern Motel is also extant and is known today as the Deluxe Inn.

*This content is excerpted word for word from the Route 66 in Oklahoma City Historic Context Project Report (2020), prepared by Blanton and Associates for the City of Oklahoma City. The complete report is available online here: https://www.okhistory.org/shpo/docs/okcrt66.pdf. This report has been financed in part with federal funds from the U.S. Department of the Interior National Park Service (NPS). The contents and opinions do not necessarily reflect the reviews or policies of NPS, nor does the mention of trade names or commercial products constitute endorsement or recommendation by NPS.