Route 66 Map: 21 Maps of Lost Alignments and Roadside Giants

The biggest Route 66 maps hold some 1,600 stops each, but the most devoted mappers trace the road itself: which stretch carried 66 in 1926, which was bypassed in 1931 or 1937, and which now lies under I-40. One map splits California’s part of the road into 324 dated pieces, others follow the 1926 loop through Santa Fe culvert by culvert or count the city signs of Amarillo. Further off the road the subject turns to what stood beside it: gas stations, lunch-car diners, motels that advertised “Free TV”, and giants and dinosaurs made of fiberglass, wood and scrap metal.

Route 66 Driving Map: Chicago to Santa Monica, Turn by Turn

“All’incrocio con la Ogden girare a sinistra”: at the Ogden junction, turn left. Franco Zefferi, who signed all eight state layers of this map, drives Route 66 in Italian, from the Begin Historic Route 66 sign on Adams Street in Chicago to the Santa Monica Pier, in 1,294 lines and points. Each turn is its own pin, and so is each place where the old road breaks off: in the Chicago suburbs the old Joliet Road is cut, so the map sends you down I-55 from Exit 276 to Exit 268. In Texas and New Mexico it marks the “tratti sterrati”, the unpaved stretches from before 1932, 1937 or 1950, and at 7th and Broadway in Los Angeles it pins the first “End of the Trail”, moved to Santa Monica ten years later. Henry’s Drive-In in Cicero gets an aside in English: “it’s meal itself”.

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1,294541 points, 753 lines

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Route 66 California Map: 324 Dated Pieces of the Road

Almost every line on this map of Route 66 in California begins with a year. The 1916 Trails Arch Bridge over the Colorado carried the road until June 1947 and now carries a gas pipeline; the Red Rock Bridge, an 1890 railroad bridge that took over, was dismantled in 1978. From the Arizona line to Los Angeles County the mapper sorts 324 pieces of road into what is original, what replaced it in 1929, 1931 or 1957, and what is only “possible but unconfirmed”, often a stretch of the older National Old Trails Road. Evidence is cited as it comes: an Auto Club map, a 1950 USGS sheet, an April 1953 aerial photo that caught a temporary road built for a bridge replacement. One piece east of Barstow is fully drivable but lies inside the Marine Corps Logistics Base, and Needles kept the road’s official end point, the “Fourth Western Terminus”, from 1974 to 1979.

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3246 points, 318 lines

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United States

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Route 66 Alignments Map: Old Roads, Bypasses and Dead Ends

The whole road from Chicago to Santa Monica, drawn in 67 lines, and most of the side lines say what happened to them. Lyons, Illinois has the pre-1928 alignment, Collinsville the 1940 to 1977 road to East St. Louis, and Mitchell the Chain of Rocks Bridge, now for pedestrians only. Near Miami, Oklahoma, the “Sidewalk Highway” is marked; in Arizona, Chambers has a stretch of old 66 that is now private property and Navajo one in “poor condition, dead end”. The longest note belongs to Oatman: the pre-1952 road is a mountain road with steep drops and tight curves, chosen because of the gold found in the mountains.

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6767 lines

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United States

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Santa Fe Loop Map: The Route 66 That Was Bypassed in 1937

From 1926 to 1937 Route 66 made a detour north through Santa Fe, and this map follows that loop from Santa Rosa to Albuquerque in 54 lines and points, culvert by culvert. The Pecos River bridge at Dillia was washed away by a flood in 1937 and never rebuilt; only its abutments remain. West of Santa Fe the road dropped down La Bajada, “a winding dangerous zig-zag descent”, and beyond it lie the Little Cut and the Big Cut, a narrow notch through a ridge used in the 1920s, concrete fords across dry arroyos and a stretch where the 1932 to 1937 road survives only as “a gash in the hillside”. It is one of a series of segment maps by theroute-66.com; the next one carries on from Albuquerque to the Arizona line.

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5425 points, 29 lines

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Route 66 Arizona Map: Dead Roads, Trading Posts and Movie Sets

Arizona’s Route 66 in generations: the map’s 343 objects include dozens of lines labelled “Dead 1st Gen Route”, “Dead 2nd Gen Route” or “1st Gen Route (Dirt Road)” beside the driving directions from Lupton to Topock. The layer of stops is called “Places to Go, Things to Do, Shit to See”, and nearly every pin carries its years: the Bucket of Blood Saloon in Holbrook (1888 to 1914), the Two Guns Zoo (1920s to 1940s), the ruins of Fort Courage, built for the TV show F Troop and standing from 1966 to 2014. The mapper notes the films as well: the Wigwam Motel became the Cozy Cone in Cars, the Hackberry General Store Lizzie’s Curios, and the Meteor City Trading Post appears in Starman. Williams’ Red Garter Inn of 1897 is marked “Former Brothel”.

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343221 points, 122 lines

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United States

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National Old Trails Road Map: The Highway Before Route 66

Before Route 66 there was the National Old Trails Road, and this map makes it drivable again from New York to Los Angeles, page by page from a route book the Automobile Club of Southern California issued around 1925. Each of its segments is named after a page, from “NOTR 60 - New York, NY to Rahway, NJ”, which included a ferry across the Hudson, westward, checked against USGS overlay maps. Where the old route survives off today’s roads it is drawn separately, with doubts noted: a stretch in Ohio “may or may not be a passable road”, and in Philadelphia Walnut was the westbound and Chestnut the eastbound route. In California and Arizona much of this road became Route 66 in 1926.

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2856 points, 279 lines

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United States

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Amarillo Route 66 Map: City Signs and a Road Through the Airport

Someone went along the streets of Amarillo that carried Route 66 and pinned the signs on them, TxDOT’s and the city’s, each with the direction of travel. Some are wrong: one at 5th and Taylor is “likely misplaced”, and whether Taylor ever carried 66 is uncertain, although the city’s signs suggest it thinks so. Between the signs come the road’s own layers: the mid-1920s route along about 18th Avenue, an intermediate alignment from 1928 to the 1940s that ran “right through current Amarillo International Airport”, and the Beltway of Amarillo Boulevard. Behind one row of houses lie traces of a very early alignment, with a mobile home partly resting on a vintage Portland cement slab.

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8585 points

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United States

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Route 66 Attractions Map: 1,637 Sights, Signs and Relics

The Captured Leg of Santa Anna in Springfield, the World’s Largest Catsup Bottle, a 1949 water tower in Collinsville, and the Gemini Giant, a muffler man with a helmet and a rocket who has stood at the Launching Pad Drive-In in Wilmington since 1960: this catalogue of 1,637 stops gives each state its own layer and every stop a category, a type and a status, from “Open to the public” and “Visible from the street” to “In disrepair” and “Gone”. The notes keep up with the road. The Lauterbach muffler man in Springfield lost his head to a tornado and got it back, Art’s Motel is marked closed since March 2015, and the “Alien Internment Camp” near McLean held “Germans, not extraterrestrials”, about 3,000 prisoners of war. Pins called “Driving options” say what you miss on the newer alignment, the Gemini Giant for one.

Objects

1,6371,637 points

Countries

United States

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Route 66 Road Trip Map: Gas, EV Chargers and the Better Route

The practical Route 66: 1,626 pins with gas stations and their opening hours from Chicago on, Tesla Superchargers and other EV chargers, motels, mostly local food and a layer of “Special Markers = don’t miss!”. The routes link to full tracks on Ride with GPS, and the notes argue: the older 1926 to 1937 alignment through New Mexico is “quicker, more ‘original’, but there is less along the route”, and in Oklahoma “the green scenic 66’ route is much better”. Near Goffs a long road closure sends drivers onto I-40 to rejoin at Ludlow, with a word for Amboy, “probably hurting from the road closure”. Along the way the maker pins film houses fans go to see, from Back to the Future to Dominic Toretto’s, and admits of the red route line, “I can’t even remember where I got the original”.

Objects

1,6261,604 points, 22 lines

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United States

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Route 66 Ghost Towns Map: Retracing Dad's 1955 Drive

“What was the price of gas like in 1955?” Along the whole road, from Chicago to Los Angeles, this map has pins called “Dad on 66”, each with a question for the father who drove it in a Chevy Bel Air: what he remembers about the food, what it was like going through the desert, “How and why did you try to do something so crazy?” Between them lie 96 stops written by someone who clearly loves the ruins: Glenrio, a ghost town in two states, the “Modern Rest Rooms” sign of Endee, a store and motor court in New Mexico roofed with flattened steel oil cans, and the Painted Desert Trading Post, reached by meeting “the Cow Boss”, who escorts you to it. Roamin’ Rich, the man behind more than 100 painted Route 66 shields, has a pin of his own.

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9696 points

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United States

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Route 66 Gas Stations Map: Service Stations and Their Owners

Eighteen historic service stations between Chicago and Rancho Cucamonga, each with the people who ran it. Russell Soulsby built his station in Mount Olive in 1926 with his father and sold only Shell for 65 years; in 1925 Sidney Casey walked 55 miles to buy the “town” of Spencer, Missouri, for $500 and built a store, a garage and a café with a barbershop. The Threatt Filling Station in Oklahoma was, according to many historians, the only Black-owned station on the road in the Jim Crow era, and Lucille Hamons ran hers near Hydro for 60 years. Around them the map’s 266 points add motels, diners, museums and the road’s popular sights.

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266266 points

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United States

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Route 66 Centennial Map: 886 Stops for the 2026 Drive

This map plans a drive for Route 66’s centennial year, 2026, in 886 stops, sights, places to eat and places to sleep, with a camera in mind. “I want to film this entire 3-mile section,” the note on West Jackson Boulevard in Chicago says; elsewhere it is “a quick photo op” or “maybe take a picture of the sign”. The mapper follows the road’s history as well: the stretch where Route 66 shared its pavement with the 1913 Lincoln Highway, the pedestrian tunnel in Odell, dug because the road was too busy to cross, and the Lexington arrow sign, explained with Jack Rittenhouse’s guidebook of 1946. A Big Chief statue in Calumet, Oklahoma, was photographed in 2007 at a car dealer in Clinton, and again at its new home on 17 May 2021.

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886884 points, 2 lines

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Historic Diners Map: Lunch Cars, Drive-Ins and Road Food

Casey’s Diner in Natick, Massachusetts, began in 1922 as a horse-drawn Worcester Lunch Car called Mulligan’s Diner. One traveller’s 1,018 independent restaurants, motels and diners give the old diners their makers and serial numbers, Worcester, O’Mahony, Silk City, Mountain View, and what became of them: the Fleetwood Diner in Ann Arbor had to be assembled while its builder, the Dag-Wood company, went out of business, and a 1939 Silk City diner in Bridgeton, New Jersey, was badly damaged by an arson fire set by its owners in 2012. On Route 66 the notes find the Ariston Cafe and the Bagdad Cafe, “even quirkier” than the cult film named after it; in Bristol, Virginia, the Burger Bar claims to be the last place Hank Williams was seen alive.

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1,0181,018 points

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Vintage Motel Postcards Map: 623 Motels in Their Own Words

Each of the 623 motels and hotels on this map speaks in the words of its own postcard. The Cosmic Age Lodge next to Disneyland offers “space bubble dividers” in a “newer than tomorrow space age decor”; the Glasgow Motel in Kentucky promises “Beautyrest Mattresses” and is 20 miles to Mammoth Cave; the Swan Motor Court in Georgia is “Fire-proof” and owned by Mrs. Eunice Roughton. Phone numbers still have their exchanges, CEdar and TErrace, and Route 66 turns up as an address: the Town Park Motel in Oklahoma City lies on “Hwy. 66 City Route”, the Albert Pick Motel near St. Louis on “U.S. By-pass 66”.

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623623 points

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Great Sign Holiday Inn Map: What Became of 911 Old Motels

The giant “Great Sign” belonged to the old Holiday Inns, and this map tracks 911 of those motels across the eastern states, region by region, with what each one is today. Many are now a Days Inn or a Super 8; Cullman’s has given way to a truck stop, Gulfport’s was demolished after Hurricane Katrina, and Huntsville’s Space Center motel is a BMW dealership. The notes get grim: the old Holiday Inn in downtown Birmingham, now the Royal Inn, is “in dubious condition; pool is full of broken toilets”, and in Corbin, Kentucky, the sign of an abandoned one still stands, covered by vines.

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911911 points

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United StatesCanada

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Endangered Roadside Places Map: Motels, Neon and a Giant Santa

Ten roadside places that were on the brink in 2011, each with the reason. The Boots Motel in Carthage, Missouri, built on Route 66 in 1939 with pink and green neon, had an owner who tried to make way for a Walgreens; the “Diving Lady” of the Starlite Motel in Mesa, an animated neon woman plunging into electric blue water, was sent crashing to the ground by a storm in October 2010; the fiberglass Giant Santa of a closed truck stop in Indiana “waves to no one”. The Roundtop Filling Station in Arkansas is shaped like a giant mushroom, the 1930 Airplane Filling Station near Knoxville like a plane, and the Wagon Wheel Motel in Oxnard is already marked “DEMOLISHED”.

Objects

1010 points

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United States

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Roadside Attractions Map: 709 Big Things, Diners and Mold-a-Ramas

A couple’s decade of roadside America, 709 stops with the year they saw each one. The “Big Stuff” layer alone runs through giant donuts on Los Angeles bakeries, a binocular building in Venice Beach, a hammer in Colorado Springs and a Campbell’s soup can signed by Andy Warhol; the World’s Largest Tooth in Crown Point, Indiana, is marked “2017 (gone)”. Other layers collect drive-ins, folk art and visionaries such as S.P. Dinsmoor’s Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kansas, presidential libraries, ballparks and the wax-figure vending machines called Mold-a-Ramas.

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709709 points

Countries

United StatesCanada

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Muffler Men Map: Fiberglass Giants and Where They Went

The first Muffler Men were bearded lumberjacks who looked like Paul Bunyan, made before International Fiberglass bought the company, and this census of the giants opens with a legend of their kinds: the Big Chief, the Happy Halfwit with an Alfred E. Neuman head, the Uniroyal Gal who looks like Jackie Kennedy, and Carpeteria Genies with a face on the front and the back of the head. Each pin says when the giant was photographed and where he went. The Gemini Giant has left the Launching Pad in Wilmington for a spot 0.6 mile west on Route 66, Stan of Birmingham is in storage in Kentucky, and the one in Fargo is “MISSING - Location Unknown”. A Viking in Buffalo City, Wisconsin, stands without his feet, which are embedded in a cement slab; a Uniroyal Gal from Livingston, Illinois, was refurbished as a pirate; and the Paulverizer in Buena Vista, Virginia, is a cyborg by Mark Cline whose head came from a giant Hurricane Bertha destroyed at Nags Head in 1996.

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419419 points

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Whispering Giants Map: Peter Toth's Carved Heads and Fallen Giants

Peter “Wolf” Toth carved giant heads of Native Americans from tree trunks and gave one to town after town, from Hawaii to Ontario; this map pins 64 of his Trail of the Whispering Giants with their names, numbers, years and the wood they were cut from. Winslow, Arizona, on Route 66, has #33, in ponderosa pine; Punta Gorda’s was carved from an ear tree. Some are “Fallen Giants”: the first, cut into the cliff at La Jolla in 1971, vanished after a bad El Niño, the one in St. Louis was struck by lightning, and Aberdeen’s sits in a fairground garage with rot damage, shown by appointment.

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6464 points

Countries

United StatesCanada

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Roadside Dinosaurs Map: Parks, Ruins and a Mandolin T. Rex

The Cabazon dinosaurs of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure now sit next to a creationist museum, and Dinosaur World in Arkansas, opened in 1962 as the largest dinosaur park in the world, has lain abandoned since 2005. This map gathers 135 roadside dinosaurs in 15 countries in three layers, parks, single beasts and dinosaur mini golf. Among the singles are a stegosaurus in Cañon City built by prison inmates in 1995, a car repair shop in Florida shaped like a dinosaur that began as a Sinclair station, a T. rex playing the mandolin in Connecticut and a lone T. rex kept caged in a storage lot in Tucson; among the parks, the ruins of Bongoland, open from 1948 to 1952, and the Flintstones’ Bedrock City near the Grand Canyon.

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135135 points

Countries

United StatesCanadaJapanand 12 more

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Kansas Roadside Art Map: The Open Range Zoo of Scrap Animals

The Fisher Bird perches on top of a silo at mile marker 91, the Super Bug sits between mile markers 83 and 84, and the Wicked Witch of the West and a Flying Monkey stand near Lincoln’s water tower. Jim and Trent Dickerman built the 102 creatures of this “Open Range Zoo” from salvaged metal and set them along Highways 18 and 14 in Lincoln County, Kansas, and the map gives each its stretch of road and side (north, south, east). At Tromble’s Retreat on the west edge of Lincoln a whole herd stands together, from the Thresh-O-Saurus and the Land Shark to the Gargantuan Ant and a “Googley-Eyed Man (I’m Watching You)”.

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102102 points

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United States

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