GoRoute66

⛽️ Magnolia Station | Vega, TX

Colonel J.T. Owen built it in 1924 on the Ozark Trail—two years before the road became Route 66. The station served travelers from the ground floor while the attendant lived upstairs. Over the decades, the building wore the signs of Magnolia, Phillips 66, and Conoco, and even housed S***z Barbershop after its days as a filling station.

When Interstate 40 bypassed Vega, the building sat vacant for nearly 30 years. But in 2001, the City of Vega secured a National Park Service Route 66 preservation grant and began restoring the landmark. It reopened as a visitor center in 2004.

🥩 The Big Texan & GoRoute66 hit the road on June 4th!

We’re hitting the road with the Big Texan Steak Ranch for the Route 66 Centennial Caravan — Santa Monica to Chicago, June 4–25. Every day, a new town. Every night at 5, a live Big Texan steak challenge from somewhere along the route. Follow along at GoRoute66.com and on socials for daily stories, live streams, and the people and places that built this road.

Photos: and

Full segment on GoRoute66 YouTube! https://youtu.be/CdjD1kUBJUc?si=dXS8RnEbg7JE8zCT

⛏️ The Golden Driller | Tulsa, OK

The Golden Driller stands 76 feet tall and weighs 43,500 pounds. He has been positioned outside the Tulsa Expo Center, just off Route 66, since 1966. He is the largest free-standing statue in the United States and the official state monument of Oklahoma.

The statue is built on a steel frame covered in concrete and plaster, with one hand resting on a working oil derrick. His face was modeled after John Stephens Jr., the man who supervised his construction.

The first version of the Driller was built in 1953 as a temporary exhibit for the International Petroleum Exposition, then the largest oil industry trade show in the world. He proved popular enough to be rebuilt in 1959 and made permanent in 1966, the year the Exposition drew its largest crowd. Oklahoma designated him the official state monument in 1979.

Tulsa earned its title as the Oil Capital of the World after the 1905 Glenn Pool strike, a major oil discovery on a farm south of the city. Route 66 was commissioned through Tulsa in 1926.

Photo Credit:
Tulsa World Herb Baber/Robert Cross/Dick Grant
Tulsa Tribune Bob McCormack
Museum of Tulsa History

Thirty years after his landmark documentary Route 66: An American Odyssey helped spark the modern Mother Road revival, award-winning filmmaker John Paget is back behind the camera. His new feature, Route 66: The Main Street of America, debuts during the highway’s 100th anniversary with a national PBS broadcast and a roadshow premiere tour through all eight Route 66 states. Rī Wolf caught up with Paget to talk about coming home to the road, the everyday heroes keeping it alive, and why the next 100 years start now. Route 66: The Main Street of America