Route 66 turns 100 this year, and the city where it famously comes to an end is marking the milestone with a new museum exhibition. The Santa Monica History Museum will open Creating Route 66: Road, Legend, Community on November 12, running through June 27, 2027, using historic photographs and artifacts to examine the road's effect on landscapes, cultures and communities.
The exhibition was reported by the Santa Monica Daily Press, which notes it was co-curated by museum executive director Anne Wallentine and Avehi Menon. Wallentine said the road's history is personal, and that the exhibition invites visitors to consider its communities and meaning, according to the same report. The show is organized into six sections that trace Route 66 from its earliest origins through its present-day revival.
From Indigenous Trails to the Dust Bowl
The exhibition's opening sections cover the road's origins, including Indigenous trails that shaped its route, per the Santa Monica Daily Press. That history runs deeper than Route 66 itself: the Santa Monica History Museum has noted that the highway absorbed most of the National Old Trails Road, a route that followed paths used by Native Americans and early European settlers.
From there, the show moves into the people who traveled the road, including Dust Bowl migrants, Black travelers who relied on the Green Book to navigate segregation, and women whose lives and work shaped the highway, according to the Daily Press. The museum's own account of a previous Route 66 exhibition described that migration story as stretching from the desperate 1930s Dust Bowl exodus to rambling road trips in the 1950s and 1960s.
Pop Culture, Signage and a First Edition
Creating Route 66 also tracks the road's hold on American popular culture, covering its presence in literature, film and music, with references to John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Disney and Pixar's Cars, the Daily Press reports. Among the artifacts on display is a first edition of The Grapes of Wrath, alongside images of roadside signage and an interactive feature letting visitors mark their own Route 66 trips.
The California Historic Route 66 Association provided loans for the exhibition, according to the Daily Press report. The museum's own materials describe past Route 66 shows as featuring early driving guides, iconic signage, ephemera and historic photographs from the Santa Monica History Museum Collection. The new exhibition also uses historic photographs and artifacts.
Why Santa Monica, and Why Now
The exhibition also covers Route 66's significance in California and in Santa Monica specifically, long known as the end of the trail, per the Daily Press. The museum's online materials describe the legacy of that designation, noting the role famous local figures like Will Rogers played in promoting Route 66, which the museum identifies as terminating at the intersection of Lincoln and Olympic Boulevards.
Just how long the full highway runs, and where it truly begins and ends, is itself a point of disagreement in the historical record. The New York Times has described Route 66 as running roughly 2,400 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles and, later, Santa Monica, while the Santa Monica History Museum's own booklet puts the figure at 2,448 miles across eight states connecting Chicago and Santa Monica directly. Either way, the road was decommissioned as a federal highway in 1985 after the rise of the Interstate Highway System, a shift the museum has linked to economic decline in towns the interstates bypassed.
The exhibition closes with a look at current efforts to revitalize Route 66 for local businesses and travelers, the Daily Press reports — a fitting bookend given how much centennial energy is circulating well beyond Santa Monica. The New York Times has reported that museums along the route have mounted their own exhibitions. The Albuquerque Museum's The Other Route 66 runs from June through January 3, and the History Museum on the Square in Springfield, Missouri, is presenting The Route 66 Series: 1926-2026 from June to September. The National Museum of Transportation in St. Louis opened its own centennial exhibit, featuring a 26-foot model of the S.S. Admiral, on March 14.
Opening Reception and Ticket Prices
The museum will host an opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m. on November 12, with tickets priced at $25 for members, $40 for nonmembers, and $66 for two tickets purchased together, according to the Daily Press. Tickets are available on the museum's website. The museum plans additional public programs through 2027, including talks on the Green Book and Route 66 travel stories, a screening of the Assertion Films documentary Route 66: The Untold Story of Women on the Mother Road, and family workshops with road-themed craft projects, with dates and registration to be posted at santamonicahistory.org/events.
The Santa Monica History Museum is located at 1350 Seventh St., next to the Santa Monica Public Library's main branch, and is open 2 to 5 p.m. Thursdays and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays through Sundays. General admission costs $8 for adults and $5 for students and seniors, and is free for museum members, children 4 and under, active military and veterans, and SNAP/EBT cardholders, with free admission for everyone on the first Sunday of each month. The museum can be reached at 310-395-2290.
