Pink flowers now line more than 800 feet of downtown Sapulpa, Oklahoma, forming a continuous bubblegum-colored ribbon along the city's central corridor. The city of Sapulpa paid for the Bubblegum Super-tunias and uses them to add color and vibrancy to the downtown district, and the blooms are expected to stay in place through the beginning of October.
The flowers don't survive Oklahoma's summer heat on their own. As News On 6 reported, Ken Daniel has tended the Bubblegum Super-tunias for about a year, and ongoing care has helped the flowers thrive, creating a consistent visual feature throughout downtown. That daily attention lines up with details from Kent Daniel of Daniel Plant Farm, who according to the Sapulpa Times oversees morning hand-watering and weekly liquid fertilizer applications to keep the hanging baskets alive when temperatures climb past 100 degrees. Manual watering happens daily alongside the city's automated downtown irrigation systems, per the same account.
A Flower Strain Built for Punishing Heat
The variety behind the display, Proven Winners' Supertunia Vista Bubblegum, isn't an accident of landscaping. Commercial retailer specifications published by Lowe's show the variety has won more than 300 national trial awards for disease resistance, heat tolerance, and self-cleaning blooms that don't require deadheading. Mature plants can reach up to 2 feet tall and trail 3 to 4 feet wide, qualities that help explain why the strain was chosen for a stretch of street where consistent color matters more than delicate upkeep.
Downtown Sapulpa has embraced flower displays as a community identity marker before. The Sapulpa Times reported that the city held its inaugural Petunia Fest in 2023, an event featuring guest speakers on pollinators and a charity auction of petunia-filled concrete planters to raise money for civic beautification.
Flowers Bloom Along a Freshly Rebuilt Route 66 Corridor
The petunias now sit along a downtown corridor that looks nothing like it did a couple of years ago. KRMG reported that Sapulpa officially reopened Dewey Avenue in January following a 10-month streetscape overhaul that reduced Route 66 through downtown from four lanes to two, widened sidewalks, and added dedicated planter infrastructure. The station also reported that the newly installed light poles along Dewey Avenue were engineered to double as structural support for hanging seasonal displays, including overhead holiday light canopies that will eventually span both traffic lanes.
That construction traces back to a 2020 general obligation bond that Sapulpa voters passed to fund the Dewey Avenue overhaul, according to Route 66 News. Construction was delayed by pandemic-related cost increases and a state transportation review, and project bids ultimately required supplemental state transport funding before the work could be finalized.
Petunias Set the Stage for the Christmas Chute's Return
The streetscape work forced a pause in one of Sapulpa's biggest tourism draws. Route 66 News reported that the Route 66 Christmas Chute drew more than 400,000 visitors during its inaugural season before taking a planned one-year hiatus in 2025 due to the street work. Event details published on the official Route 66 Christmas Chute website show the holiday display is scheduled to return later in 2026, timed to align with the nationwide 100th anniversary celebration of U.S. Route 66, a highway that runs more than 400 miles through Oklahoma alone.
The petunia corridor and the rebuilt street it sits on fit into decades of organized effort to keep Sapulpa's commercial core alive. Official records from Sapulpa Main Street show the city joined the state's Main Street revitalization program in 1990, generating more than $15.5 million in public and private downtown investment during its first 15 years. Downtown Sapulpa, located 15 miles southwest of Tulsa in Creek County, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003, according to a travel guide published on TravelOK; the city serves as the Creek County seat with a population exceeding 21,000 residents.
For now, the more immediate marker of the season is simpler: a wall of pink stretching down Route 66 through the middle of town, kept alive one watering can at a time until the blooms fade toward the beginning of October.
