Welcome to the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum
At 2229 West Gary Boulevard in Clinton, Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum stands as the state’s official showcase of America’s most iconic highway — the definitive Mother Road museum in a state that holds more drivable miles of original Route 66 than any other. Operated by the Oklahoma Historical Society, this beautifully designed, immersive institution takes visitors on a personal, decade-by-decade journey through the full arc of Route 66’s story: from the highway’s 1926 commissioning through the Dust Bowl years, the wartime era, the chrome-and-neon golden age of the 1950s, the freewheeling 1960s, the interstate bypass and decommissioning, and the modern preservation revival. With its striking Art Deco-influenced exterior, era-specific soundtracks, rotating classic cars in the lobby, a recreation of the legendary Pop Hicks Restaurant diner, a black-lit psychedelic VW Microbus, and one of the finest Route 66 gift shops anywhere on the highway, the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum is not just a museum — it is an experience. For any traveler on Route 66 through Oklahoma, this is the essential stop.
Where Is the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum?
The Oklahoma Route 66 Museum is located at 2229 West Gary Boulevard, Clinton, Oklahoma 73601 — near the western end of Clinton, just off Business I-40 (which follows the Route 66 alignment through town). Clinton is in Custer County in western Oklahoma, approximately 85 miles west of Oklahoma City on the Will Rogers Highway. The museum sits prominently on the south side of Gary Boulevard with easy off-street parking and its glowing neon Route 66 shield visible from the road. Across the street stands the Trade Winds Inn, a historic motel with its own remarkable Route 66 story — including a preserved room where Elvis Presley stayed multiple times during his career.
History: From Western Trails Museum to Oklahoma Route 66 Museum
Clinton’s Route 66 Heritage
Clinton’s identity is deeply rooted in Route 66. The city — named for Judge Clinton Irwin, not the 42nd president — began its life as a trading post serving the Cheyenne and Arapaho people, and grew into a significant western Oklahoma commercial hub with the arrival of the railroads. When Route 66 was commissioned through Clinton in 1926, the city embraced its new role as a service hub for cross-country travelers. The highway brought diners, motels, filling stations, and automobile courts to Gary Boulevard, and Clinton became known as one of the friendliest stops on the western Oklahoma corridor of the Will Rogers Highway.
Among the city’s most beloved Route 66 institutions was Pop Hicks Restaurant, which opened on January 1, 1936, and became the longest-running restaurant on Oklahoma Route 66. It operated continuously for more than six decades before a devastating fire claimed it in 1999. Jack and Gladys Cuthbert headed the U.S. Highway 66 Association for decades from Clinton, serving as an information clearinghouse and promotional engine for the highway from Chicago to Santa Monica. The Trade Winds Inn across from the museum hosted Elvis Presley on at least four visits; his room has been preserved as a period shrine that guests can still book today. These are the stories that give the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum its context — it was built in a community that lived Route 66 deeply and gave the highway some of its most enduring characters and institutions.
The Western Trails Museum: The Predecessor
Before it became the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum, the building on Gary Boulevard housed the Western Trails Museum, a local history institution that documented the trails, cattle drives, and pioneer history of western Oklahoma. By the late 1980s, the museum was struggling — its audience was primarily local, and like Clinton’s Route 66-era businesses, it had felt the economic impact of the interstate bypass that had drawn traffic away from the old highway. The realization gradually took hold that converting the museum to a Route 66 focus would serve both preservation and community revitalization.
The Oklahoma Historical Society and the 1995 Opening
The Oklahoma Historical Society acquired the museum in 1991, and a comprehensive redesign began in 1993. Funding came from a remarkable combination of federal, state, and private sources: grants from the Oklahoma Foundation for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, funds raised by the Friends of Oklahoma Route 66 Association in Clinton, and in-kind contributions — altogether approximately one million dollars that renovated the building, created the exhibits, and constructed the museum’s stunning new facade. Key among the private contributions was the donation of the Cuthbert collection: Gladys Cuthbert donated the vast archive of her late husband Jack’s decades of Route 66 Association correspondence, artifacts, and memorabilia collected from across all eight Route 66 states — a collection that formed the genuine historical foundation of the new museum’s curio cabinet and exhibits. Jack Cuthbert’s own association podium is still used at museum events.
The Oklahoma Route 66 Museum opened in 1995 under the auspices of the Oklahoma Historical Society, with its stunning new look and immersive Route 66 focus. It immediately drew visitors from across the country and around the world, revitalizing Clinton’s Route 66 tourism economy and establishing the museum as one of the most respected Mother Road institutions anywhere on the highway.
The Building: Rand Elliott’s Art Deco Tribute to the Mother Road
The Oklahoma Route 66 Museum’s exterior is one of the most deliberately evocative pieces of Route 66 architecture anywhere on the highway. It was designed by Rand Elliott — an acclaimed Oklahoma City architect and Clinton native, recognized for his sensitivity to culture and setting — who created a facade that reads immediately as Route 66 royalty: sleek, retro lettering, architectural neon, and a glass-fronted lobby that give the building a visual character firmly rooted in the 1950s aesthetic of mid-century modernism along the Mother Road. Elliott’s design evokes the era when Route 66 was at the absolute height of its cultural influence — the postwar golden decade when neon signs, chrome-trimmed cars, and roadside architecture defined the American visual landscape.
The lobby features one of the museum’s most visible attractions: a rotating classic car displayed in the front window, provided by local automobile enthusiasts and changed out every few months. On one visit you might find a gleaming 1963 Corvette; on another, a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air — each vehicle a period-perfect ambassador for the museum’s contents and an instant signal to passing travelers that something special is happening inside. The building also features the iconic neon Route 66 shield on the lawn out front, glowing over Gary Boulevard exactly as the great roadside signs of the highway’s golden era glowed over the Mother Road itself. It is one of those signs that, as one traveler put it, “still grabs the eye — just like the old highway signs used to do.”
Inside the Museum: A Decade-by-Decade Journey Down the Mother Road
The Oklahoma Route 66 Museum’s defining organizational principle is its decade-by-decade structure: visitors travel chronologically through Route 66’s full history from 1926 to 1985 and beyond, with each gallery room recreating the culture, sounds, artifacts, and atmosphere of a specific era. The journey curves through the museum’s approximately 10,000 square feet of floor space on a single level — fully accessible — with each gallery flowing naturally into the next. Between eras, collages of contemporary newspaper headlines anchor the visitor in historical time and propel the narrative forward. Each room’s era-specific soundtrack is one of the museum’s most acclaimed features: the music of each decade — from Woody Guthrie’s “Will Rogers Highway” to the Eagles’ “Hotel California” — plays throughout the corresponding galleries, creating an immersive sonic environment that gives the exhibits an emotional dimension that photographs and artifacts alone cannot provide.
The World’s Largest Curio Cabinet: Where the Journey Begins
The museum’s journey begins with what is billed as the “world’s largest curio cabinet” — a towering display offering a visual feast of special treasures collected from across the length of Route 66, from Chicago to Santa Monica. Curio shops were one of the definitive roadside institutions of the Mother Road’s golden era, and launching the museum experience with a recreation of that tradition immediately establishes the spirit of discovery and accumulation that characterized Route 66 travel. The Cuthbert collection forms the historical core of this opening display.
The 1920s: The Road Is Born
The journey’s first chapter covers Route 66’s origins in 1926 — the political negotiations, the route alignments, the early road construction, and the profound promise of a highway that connected Chicago to the Pacific coast. Exhibits explain the mechanics of how Route 66 came to be: the national highway numbering system, the role of Oklahoma boosters like Cyrus Avery (the Tulsa businessman often called the Father of Route 66), and the early road conditions that made travel on the newly designated highway simultaneously exciting and demanding. By the mid-1930s, Oklahoma had paved its entire Route 66 section — a significant achievement the exhibits contextualize within the broader Good Roads movement of the era.
The 1930s: The Dust Bowl and the Road of Hope and Heartbreak
The museum’s Dust Bowl gallery is among its most emotionally affecting spaces. Route 66 became the road of the Great Depression — the escape route for the hundreds of thousands of Oklahoma and Texas families displaced by the combination of drought, wind erosion, and economic collapse that turned the southern Great Plains into a wasteland through the mid-1930s. John Steinbeck immortalized this exodus in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, calling Route 66 “the Mother Road” — a name that stuck. The museum’s Dust Bowl exhibits recreate the atmosphere of those desperate years with personal belongings, photographs, and artifacts from the migrant families who loaded everything they owned onto overheated Jalopies and headed west on a road that promised more than it could always deliver. Newspaper collages from the period anchor the narrative in historical fact while the space’s design and soundtrack evoke the dust, heat, and human determination of the era.
The 1940s: Big Band, Wartime Trucks, and Coming Home
The World War II era transformed Route 66 from a migration road into a military artery. The exhibits covering the 1940s capture both the wartime economy that sustained the highway’s towns and the emotional weight of the war itself: the roar of military convoys, the farewell and reunion scenes played out at diners and filling stations along the route, and the Big Band soundtrack that defined the era. The museum recreates the sounds of this period with particular fidelity — the era-specific music here has moved visitors to dance in the gallery, according to multiple visitor accounts. The 1940s exhibits also document the surge in Route 66 commerce that came with wartime economic activity and the beginning of the postwar prosperity that would produce the highway’s golden age.
The 1950s: Chrome, Neon, and the Pop Hicks Diner
If the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum has a crown jewel among its decade rooms, it is the 1950s gallery — the era when Route 66 reached the absolute peak of its cultural influence and commercial vitality. The postwar boom doubled American car ownership — from 25.8 million vehicles in 1945 to 52.1 million by 1955 — and those new cars flooded onto Route 66, fueling a roadside economy of motels, diners, filling stations, souvenir shops, and roadside attractions that defined the American landscape for a generation. The museum’s 1950s room captures this era in full sensory detail: gleaming chrome, vibrant neon, Formica countertops, and the irresistible glow of a jukebox.
The centerpiece of the 1950s gallery is the Pop Hicks Restaurant replica — a recreation of Clinton’s most beloved Route 66 institution, the diner that opened January 1, 1936 and operated for more than six decades as the longest-running restaurant on Oklahoma Route 66 before a devastating fire destroyed it in 1999. The Pop Hicks replica features the iconic black-and-white tile floor, red leather diner stools, Formica countertops, and a period jukebox. Visitors can sit at the counter or in a booth and, as the Oklahoma Historical Society describes it, “feel the open road” while the museum’s design team pipes in the ambient sounds of a busy mid-century diner — coffee cups, conversation, the distant hum of a highway outside. The recreated Pop Hicks is the museum exhibit most frequently cited in visitor reviews as unforgettable.
The 1960s: The Counterculture Road and the Psychedelic Microbus
The 1960s gallery traces Route 66’s transformation as the decade’s counterculture claimed the road as a symbol of freedom and the open-road philosophy. The black-lit, psychedelic Volkswagen Microbus — one of the museum’s most visually striking and widely photographed artifacts — anchors this gallery. The Microbus represents the era’s spirit perfectly: the highway that had carried Dust Bowl refugees and postwar families now carried a new generation of travelers seeking something less defined but equally urgent. The 1960s exhibits also document the period television show Route 66 (which ran from 1960 to 1964 and featured two young men traveling the highway in a Corvette), the growing presence of interstate highway construction that was beginning to threaten Route 66’s traffic, and the era’s expanding automobile culture.
The Original Neon Capitol Motel Sign
Among the museum’s most significant artifact acquisitions is the original neon sign from the Capitol Motel in Oklahoma City — a piece of Route 66 neon history rescued from the demolished motel and preserved within the museum’s collection. The Capitol Motel sign represents the thousands of neon signs that once defined Route 66’s visual landscape from Chicago to Santa Monica — the majority of which have been lost to demolition, neglect, or storm damage. Its presence in the museum as an original artifact, rather than a reproduction, gives it a historical weight that visitors respond to immediately.
Decline, Decommissioning, and Revival
The museum does not shy away from Route 66’s bittersweet final chapters. The Interstate Highway Act of 1956 set in motion a process that would gradually strangle Route 66’s traffic — bypassing town after town and devastating the local economies that had grown up to serve the highway’s travelers. By the early 1970s, the process of formal decommissioning had begun, removing Route 66’s status as a U.S. Highway segment by segment. The last Oklahoma section was decommissioned in 1985. The museum’s exhibits on this period include photographs of shuttered motels, empty diners, and abandoned filling stations — the human cost of infrastructure change that fell most heavily on the communities that had built their identities around the road.
The Now and Future Gallery
The museum’s final gallery looks forward as well as backward, celebrating the remarkable Route 66 preservation movement that began in the late 1980s and continues to this day. Visitors meet the preservationists, volunteers, and passionate travelers who have kept the highway’s spirit alive — and learn about the contemporary Route 66 that draws millions of travelers from across the United States and around the world each year. This gallery also features changing special exhibits that keep the museum fresh for repeat visitors and address current Route 66 themes and stories.
The Film Theater
After completing the gallery circuit, visitors settle into the museum’s theater for a film that brings Route 66’s full story together in documentary form — a satisfying conclusion to the immersive journey that allows the historical and personal dimensions of the highway’s story to wash over viewers in a darkened room with full sound. The film is consistently cited in visitor reviews as one of the museum’s highlights, providing emotional context and narrative coherence for everything encountered in the galleries.
The Curio Gift Shop: One of the Best on Route 66
The Oklahoma Route 66 Museum’s gift shop — named the “Curio” in keeping with the museum’s roadside-shop spirit — is consistently ranked among the finest Route 66 gift shops anywhere on the highway. The selection includes:
- Books: A comprehensive collection of Route 66 history, photography, and travel books, including titles on the Oklahoma corridor and the highway’s full 2,448-mile span.
- Signs and art: Reproduction Route 66 signs, neon-style prints, and original artwork celebrating the Mother Road.
- Clothing: T-shirts, hats, and apparel with Route 66 and Oklahoma themes.
- Toys and games: A family-friendly selection including classic road trip games and Route 66-themed items for younger visitors.
- Videos and music: Documentaries, film, and music collections spanning the eras covered in the museum’s galleries.
- Collectibles and memorabilia: An extensive range of Route 66 souvenirs, from magnets and postcards to higher-end collectible items.
The gift shop’s selection is particularly strong for serious Route 66 enthusiasts — those who want more than a standard souvenir magnet. Supporting the Curio shop directly supports the museum’s operations and preservation work.
Clinton’s Broader Route 66 Attractions
The Trade Winds Inn and the Elvis Connection
Directly across Gary Boulevard from the museum stands the Trade Winds Inn, a historic Route 66 motel with a remarkable celebrity connection: Elvis Presley stayed at the Trade Winds at least four times during his career, typically while traveling between concert engagements. Room 215 has been preserved as a period mini-shrine to Elvis’s visits and remains bookable for guests who want to sleep where the King slept. The Trade Winds’ classic neon sign and mid-century motor court architecture make it one of the most evocative surviving Route 66 motel properties in western Oklahoma.
McLain Rogers Park
Clinton’s McLain Rogers Park, a WPA-era park with Art Deco architecture along 10th Street (old Route 66), features a swimming pool, water slide, picnic areas, and an iconic Route 66 sign that makes it one of the most photographed spots in the city. The park’s New Deal-era design and its association with historic Route 66 make it a worthwhile addition to any Clinton itinerary.
Jigg’s Smokehouse
West of Clinton along I-40, Jigg’s Smokehouse is a tiny cabin establishment that has built a legendary reputation for beef jerky and smoked meats along the Route 66 corridor. Its travel-friendly format — perfect for the road — and its deep ties to western Oklahoma’s ranching culture make it an ideal companion stop to the museum.
Toby Keith’s Hometown
Clinton is the childhood home of country music superstar Toby Keith, a fact that adds another layer of cultural connection to this already rich Oklahoma town. Keith’s Oklahoma roots are as deep as the highway that runs through his hometown.
Continuing Your Route 66 Journey from Clinton
Clinton occupies a strategic position on Oklahoma’s western Route 66 corridor, roughly midway between Oklahoma City to the east and the Texas state line to the west. Heading east from Clinton along the Will Rogers Highway, travelers reach Oklahoma City — home of the beloved Milk Bottle Grocery and a wealth of Route 66 heritage — then continue northeast through Arcadia (home of the legendary 1898 Round Barn) and Stroud (home of the Rock Cafe that inspired Pixar’s Cars) before reaching Sapulpa and the Rock Creek Bridge. Further northeast, Tulsa offers the full Route 66 experience in Oklahoma’s second city, and the Blue Whale of Catoosa smiles from the pond in Catoosa. The Will Rogers Memorial Museum in Claremore honors the man after whom Oklahoma’s stretch of Route 66 is named. For the complete picture of everything Oklahoma’s remarkable 432-mile Route 66 corridor has to offer, see our guide to Route 66 in Oklahoma.
Climate and the Best Time to Visit
Clinton and Custer County experience a humid subtropical climate with hot summers and mild winters. Spring (March–May) and fall (September–November) offer the most comfortable driving conditions on Route 66 through western Oklahoma, with mild temperatures and the spectacular open-sky light of the Great Plains at its most photogenic. Summer is hot — temperatures regularly reach the mid-90s°F — but the museum’s air-conditioned galleries make it an excellent refuge from the Oklahoma heat. Spring is tornado season; travelers should monitor forecasts from late March through June. The museum is open year-round except Thanksgiving, Christmas, and a few major holidays.
Practical Tips for Visiting the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum
- Address: 2229 West Gary Boulevard, Clinton, Oklahoma 73601
- Phone: (580) 323-7866
- Website: okhistory.org/sites/route66
- Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 9 a.m.–5 p.m., Sunday 1–5 p.m. Closed Mondays, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Hours may vary; verify before visiting.
- Admission: Adults approximately $7, Seniors and Students approximately $6. Children under 6 typically free. Contact museum or check the Oklahoma Historical Society website for current pricing.
- Parking: Free off-street parking is available adjacent to the museum on Gary Boulevard.
- Allow enough time: Budget at least 60–90 minutes for the galleries and film. Two hours is recommended for visitors who want to read all the exhibit text, browse the gift shop thoroughly, and photograph the exhibits at leisure.
- The classic car: The rotating classic car in the lobby changes every few months, provided by local enthusiasts. Whatever is on display during your visit will be worth photographing.
- Pop Hicks diner: Don’t rush through the 1950s gallery — sit at the counter, take in the atmosphere, and let the era-specific music do its work.
- The film theater: Complete the full gallery circuit before entering the theater. The film is designed as a conclusion to the museum journey, not an introduction.
- The Curio gift shop: Budget time and wallet space for the gift shop. It is genuinely one of the best Route 66 shops anywhere on the highway and consistently generates five-star reviews from visitors.
- Combine with the Trade Winds: Walk or drive across Gary Boulevard to see the Trade Winds Inn and its Elvis connection. Room 215 is available for booking.
- McLain Rogers Park: After the museum, head to McLain Rogers Park on 10th Street (old Route 66) for the WPA-era architecture and the iconic Route 66 park sign.
Final Thoughts: Why the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum Is Essential
There are Route 66 museums all along the 2,448-mile highway, from Chicago to Santa Monica. Some are gift shops with a few display cases. Some are excellent regional collections. And then there is the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum in Clinton — which occupies a category of its own. As Oklahoma’s official state museum of the Mother Road, operated by the Oklahoma Historical Society, built from a collection anchored by decades of genuine Route 66 Association materials, designed by a Clinton-native architect who understood instinctively what the road looked like and felt like, and organized around an immersive, decade-by-decade journey that puts visitors inside the eras rather than simply observing them, it is the closest thing the Mother Road has to a definitive institutional home in the state that built the highway’s identity.
Oklahoma holds more drivable miles of original Route 66 than any other state. The highway is named the Will Rogers Highway here, for a Cherokee-heritage Oklahoma cowboy who became the voice of a nation. The Dust Bowl exodus that gave Route 66 its deepest human meaning originated in Oklahoma fields. The towns of Arcadia, Stroud, Sapulpa, Claremore, and a hundred others along the Will Rogers Highway carry the living history of the road in their streets, their buildings, and their people. The Oklahoma Route 66 Museum in Clinton is the place where that entire story is gathered, honored, and told with the care and passion it deserves.
Nearby Route 66 Highlights
- Route 66 in Oklahoma — Complete Guide — The definitive guide to Oklahoma’s 432-mile Route 66 corridor, the Will Rogers Highway from the Kansas border to the Texas state line.
- Oklahoma City on Route 66 — The state capital and a Route 66 hub, approximately 85 miles east of Clinton on the Mother Road.
- Milk Bottle Grocery, Oklahoma City — One of Route 66’s most charming and beloved roadside oddities, a tiny triangular building with a giant milk bottle on the roof.
- Round Barn, Arcadia — The 1898 Route 66 landmark built of Kellyville sandstone, one of the Mother Road’s most photographed and beloved structures.
- Rock Cafe, Stroud — The legendary Route 66 diner that inspired Pixar’s Cars, open since 1939 on the Will Rogers Highway.
- Route 66 Interpretive Center, Chandler — An immersive Mother Road museum inside a 1937 WPA sandstone armory, with vehicle-seat exhibits and decade-themed videos.
- Rock Creek Bridge, Sapulpa — A 1921 steel truss bridge with a rare red brick deck, now the centerpiece of Sapulpa’s new Route 66 Park.
- Sapulpa, Oklahoma — Home of the Heart of Route 66 Auto Museum, the Waite Phillips Filling Station, and the Rock Creek Bridge.
- Tulsa on Route 66 — Oklahoma’s second city, with art deco architecture, neon signs, and a rich Mother Road heritage.
- Blue Whale of Catoosa — The 80-foot smiling fiberglass whale, one of Route 66’s most joyful and universally beloved roadside landmarks.
- Will Rogers Memorial Museum, Claremore — Honoring Oklahoma’s most beloved son, the Cherokee cowboy for whom the Will Rogers Highway is named.
