On November 11, about 50 people crowded into the back room at the Route 66 Diner in Albuquerque for a dinner organized by the New Mexico Route 66 Association. The “Mother Road,” as John Steinbeck called Route 66 in his famous 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath, serves as the Main Street of dozens of towns and cities, including Albuquerque’s Central Avenue along which the diner is located.
“This is so special,” said Melissa Beasley-Lee, president of the association. “The 100 years’ [celebration] is just absolutely phenomenal, and we're really excited about it.”
Dinner at the diner was just a part of the association's celebration of Route 66’s official 100th birthday – the road having been officially designated on November 11, 1926 – with both an afterparty at the hidden speakeasy at Hotel Zazz (previously University Lodge, also built along Route 66) and an earlier presentation by Donatella Davanzo, one of the association’s board members, who has spent years connecting the road’s cultural heritage with modern-day New Mexico.
“Route 66 is so much about American history,” said Beasley-Lee. “A lot of classrooms, actually, in other countries, use Route 66 to learn about America and the United States.”
Davanzo’s talk showed the audience that many Americans have a lot to learn, too. Having published her dissertation, titled “Tangibility and Symbolism Along Historic Highway 66 In Albuquerque” in 2018, this year, Davanzo is out with a new book – fittingly, an atlas – as well as an online interactive map that explores and maps the connections between the historical narratives, places, and people to today’s Route 66.
For example, Davanzo said, the road attracted whole families to switch professions from agriculture to serving travelers, through managing businesses like filling stations, restaurants and motels. As part of her research project, which ran from 2022-2025, Davanzo conducted 125 interviews and documented 265 existing commercial facilities and 171 historic commercial sites. That included visits to New Mexico towns and cities — Glenrio, Endee, Bard, San Jon, Cuervo, Newkirk — that did not recover after Route 66’s official decommissioning in 1985.
Today, of course, said Davanzo, we still remember “the cities in the famous [Route 66] song – it’s like a map in music.”
Turns out, perhaps the most memorable lyric in the song, “Get Your Kicks on Route 66,” came from composer Bobby Troup’s wife, Cynthia Hare, who made it up as they drove the whole route, winding from Chicago to L.A., more than 2,000 miles all the way.
After Davanzo’s talk, the audience was invited to enjoy Route 66 birthday cake and to view an exhibit titled “Life and Landscape: Route 66 in New Mexico.” The exhibit includes a giant touchscreen for navigating Davanza’s interactive map with thousands of items from New Mexico Digital Collections. The exhibit is open to the public at the University of New Mexico’s Zimmerman library and runs until November 30.
