Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza: The Heart of Route 66 in Tulsa, Oklahoma
If Route 66 has a founding father, it is Cyrus Stevens Avery of Tulsa, Oklahoma. And if that founding father has a monument worthy of the highway he created, it is the Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza — a riverside landmark on the banks of the Arkansas River where the original Route 66 crossed Tulsa on its way from Chicago to Santa Monica. Here, at the intersection of Southwest Boulevard and Riverside Drive, a complex of bronze sculpture, historic bridge, neon art, and sweeping river views tells the full story of the man who fought to bring Route 66 through Oklahoma and who numbered the highway 66 when bureaucratic compromise threatened to take that designation away entirely.
The plaza is, by any measure, one of the most historically significant free stops on the entire 2,448-mile length of the Mother Road. The centerpiece “East Meets West” bronze sculpture — a 14-foot-tall, 40-foot-wide, 10-ton work of extraordinary detail depicting the Avery family’s Model T encountering a terrified horse-drawn oil wagon on the original 11th Street Bridge — is Route 66’s most ambitious monument to its own origins. The adjacent Cyrus Avery Route 66 Memorial Bridge, the historic 11th Street span that Avery himself helped build and then routed the Mother Road across, stands as a haunting reminder of the highway’s beginnings. And across the river, the Route 66 Neon Sign Park glows with the visual language of the road’s golden age.
This guide covers everything you need to visit the Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza: the complete story of Cyrus Avery and how he created Route 66, a detailed walkthrough of everything at the plaza, navigation and parking guidance, the Route 66 Neon Sign Park, nearby Tulsa stops, and how the plaza fits into a broader Route 66 in Oklahoma itinerary. The plaza is free, it is open daily, and it is indispensable for any serious Route 66 traveler.
Who Was Cyrus Avery? The Man Who Created Route 66
The story of the Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza begins with the man himself — one of the most consequential figures in American transportation history, yet one who remains surprisingly little-known outside Route 66 circles.
Cyrus Stevens Avery was born on August 31, 1871, in Stevensville, Pennsylvania, and came to Oklahoma Territory in the early 1900s after stints in Missouri and Kansas. He settled in Tulsa in 1907 and quickly established himself as a businessman, oilman, and civic leader. He served as chairman of the Tulsa County Commission from 1913 to 1916, during which time he oversaw the construction of the concrete 11th Street Bridge across the Arkansas River — the very bridge that would eventually become the original Route 66 crossing in Tulsa and the physical centerpiece of the plaza that bears his name.
Avery’s involvement in good roads advocacy grew steadily through the 1910s and early 1920s. He joined the Oklahoma Good Roads Association, served as president of the Albert Pike Highway Association, and became a leading voice in the national movement to systematize America’s highways. In 1923 he was appointed to the Oklahoma State Highway Commission, where he implemented a gasoline tax to fund highway development — an innovation that became a model for other states.
By 1924 he was serving as a consultant to the federal government on highway matters, and when Congress tasked a group of highway specialists with creating the Federal Highway System — a numbered national network that would bring order to the patchwork of state and local roads — Avery was at the table. His single most important contribution came in the routing of the highway that would run from Chicago to Los Angeles. The original proposal would have sent it through Kansas and Colorado, bypassing Oklahoma entirely. Avery argued successfully that the route should turn south through Tulsa and Oklahoma City, then west across the Texas Panhandle, New Mexico, Arizona, and southern California. His argument: this path avoided the high mountain passes of the Rockies and better served the population centers of the south-central United States. The government accepted.
Even the highway’s number was Avery’s doing. The road had been provisionally assigned the number 60, but Kentucky objected and demanded that number for its own highway. After a protracted bureaucratic battle, Avery discovered that 66 was unassigned. He took it. The double-six number, with its easy rhythm and its visual symmetry, became one of the most recognizable numbers in American culture. Avery personally chose the number that made the highway iconic.
He then founded the U.S. Highway 66 Association, the organization that lobbied for the paving and promotion of the highway and helped transform a numbered road into a national phenomenon. He spent decades in Tulsa as an entrepreneur — he ran a filling station, a tourist camp, and the Old English Inn along the original Route 66 alignment at Admiral Place — before retiring from business in 1958. He died in California in 1963 and is buried in Tulsa at Rose Hill Park Cemetery on East Admiral Place.
What You’ll Find at the Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza
The Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza is not a single monument but a complex of interconnected elements spread across both sides of the Arkansas River and linked by the Cyrus Avery Route 66 Memorial Bridge. Understanding how the pieces relate to each other is the key to getting the most out of a visit.
The “East Meets West” Bronze Sculpture
The centerpiece of the north-side plaza is the “East Meets West” sculpture, created by Texas artist Robert Summers and dedicated on November 9, 2012 — timed to commemorate the highway’s official “birth” on November 11, 1926. The sculpture cost approximately $1.178 million and is one of the most ambitious Route 66 public artworks ever created.
The scene Summers depicted is described by the plaza’s own plaques as “a fictitious but probable” moment in Avery’s life: Cyrus, his wife Essie, their daughter Helen, and the family cat are traveling westbound in their Model T on the newly designated Route 66. They meet an eastbound teamster hauling a wagonload of barrels and pipe from the West Tulsa oil fields, his horses terrified by the sounds and smells of the combustion engine. “East met West, old met new, and the past met the future,” one of the plaques declares.
The sculpture is 14 feet tall, 18 feet wide, and spans 40 feet in total. It weighs more than 10 tons. The bronze work is extraordinary in its detail — visitors who take the time to examine the piece closely discover remarkable specifics: the texture of the horses’ harnesses, the fear in their eyes, the family cat perched in the Model T, and — a detail that has delighted and surprised many visitors — roadkill on the automobile’s front grille. The Model T itself was cast from an actual 1920s Ford antique.
The sculpture stands in a paved plaza flanked by the flags of all eight states that Route 66 traverses: Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. The flags fly in a row, creating a colorful visual frame for the sculpture and immediately communicating the highway’s geographic scope.
The Cyrus Avery Route 66 Memorial Bridge (Historic 11th Street Bridge)
Directly adjacent to the sculpture, sealed behind a gate topped with a Route 66 shield, is the historic 11th Street Bridge — officially renamed the Cyrus Avery Route 66 Memorial Bridge in 2004. Completed in December 1915, it was the first concrete bridge west of the Mississippi River and was a key part of Avery’s sales pitch to route Route 66 through Tulsa: he argued that Tulsa’s existing modern bridge made his routing superior to alternatives. The bridge was a genuine engineering achievement for its era.
Route 66 crossed this bridge from its commissioning in 1926 until I-244 was completed in 1967, pulling the majority of traffic onto the new interstate span. The 11th Street Bridge was closed to vehicles in 1980 and to pedestrians in 2008, when engineers determined that it would require $15 million in repairs just to be made safe for foot traffic. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996 under Criteria A and C — recognized for its historical significance to transportation and its engineering significance as a concrete structure.
The bridge is visible from the plaza, from the pedestrian skywalk above, and from the adjacent interstate bridge. Its weathered concrete piers and the decades of growth that have taken root in its cracks make it one of the most evocative “haunted” structures on the entire Mother Road — a ghost of the original highway standing in permanent retirement beside its modern replacements.
The Route 66 Skywalk and Pedestrian Bridge
The plaza is accessed from the parking lot at the top of the hill via a pedestrian skywalk and overpass that spans Southwest Boulevard below. The skywalk is designed with an art deco-inspired zig-zag aesthetic and features a large neon Route 66 shield logo visible from the road below. The walk from the parking lot across the skywalk and down the steps to the plaza takes approximately three to five minutes. Note that the access involves stairs — there is currently no elevator available, which is a limitation for visitors with mobility challenges.
The view from the skywalk is itself worthwhile: looking east across the Arkansas River toward downtown Tulsa, and west toward the historic bridge and the river parks system, the vantage point captures the geographic logic of Avery’s original highway routing.
The Route 66 Neon Sign Park (Avery Plaza Southwest)
Cross the Cyrus Avery Memorial Bridge (using the pedestrian walkway that runs alongside the automotive span) to reach the Route 66 Neon Sign Park, which opened in 2020 on the southwest end of the bridge. The park features replica neon signs from three Route 66 motels that once operated along Tulsa’s stretch of the Mother Road: the Will Rogers Motor Court, the Tulsa Auto Court, and the Oil Capital Motel. The originals were demolished long ago; the replicas were recreated from postcards and historic photographs, restoring the visual presence of Tulsa’s Route 66 neon heritage.
The three signs represent the three distinct eras of Route 66 in Tulsa during the highway’s active years as a federal highway. After dark, the neon signs light the west bank of the Arkansas River in the colors of Route 66’s golden age. For photographers, the Neon Sign Park after dark is one of the most atmospheric and distinctive Route 66 images available anywhere on the Oklahoma corridor.
Historical Information Kiosks and Plaques
Throughout the plaza, kiosks and plaques provide detailed historical context about Cyrus Avery’s life, his role in creating the Federal Highway System, the history of the 11th Street Bridge, and the significance of Route 66 to American culture. These interpretive elements are unusually thorough compared to most roadside landmarks and reward the visitor who takes 20 or 30 minutes to read through them in full. The plaza essentially functions as an open-air museum dedicated to Route 66’s origins.
Visiting Tips: Getting the Most from the Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza
Allow More Time Than You Think
Most Route 66 travelers who plan a “quick stop” at the Cyrus Avery Plaza end up staying longer than anticipated. Budget at least 45 to 60 minutes if you plan to read the kiosks, examine the sculpture in detail, walk the skywalk, and cross to the Neon Sign Park. Allow 90 minutes to two hours if you want to walk a stretch of the Arkansas River trail, which connects to the broader Tulsa River Parks system — one of the best urban trail networks in Oklahoma.
Photography Strategy
The “East Meets West” sculpture offers outstanding photography from multiple angles. The best wide shots that capture both the automobile and the horse-drawn wagon in a single frame require stepping back to the full width of the plaza. Close-up detail shots of the horses’ expressions, the family cat, and the automobile grille reward a slower, more exploratory approach. Examine every surface of the bronze — the level of detail in Summers’ work is exceptional and reveals something new with each pass.
The bridge photographs best from the pedestrian skywalk above, which gives a long-axis view of the historic span against the Arkansas River. From Riverside Drive, the bridge and sculpture can be framed together. For the Neon Sign Park, plan your photography after dark — the replica neon signs are dramatically more photogenic when illuminated against the night sky than in daylight.
With Kids
The Cyrus Avery Plaza is an excellent stop for families. Children respond instinctively to the scale of the sculpture — the horses, the automobile, the family cat, and the hidden roadkill detail on the grille are all natural conversation starters. The open plaza space gives children room to move, and the river trail connection offers a place to run after time in the car. For families building a Route 66 trip around age-appropriate experiences, see the Route 66 with Kids Planning Guide for pacing strategies and the best family stops across all eight states.
Practical Access Notes
The plaza is open daily as a public space with no hours or admission charge. The pedestrian skywalk involves stairs; visitors with limited mobility may prefer to view the sculpture and bridge from Riverside Drive. The parking lot at the top of 13th Street is free. The route from the lot to the sculpture is straightforward once you follow the trail signs.
| Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza — Visitor Quick Facts | |
| Address | Southwest Blvd at Riverside Dr, Tulsa, OK 74127 (corner of SW Boulevard & Riverside Drive) |
| Hours | Open daily during daylight hours (the plaza is an open public space). The Neon Sign Park is lit after dark. |
| Admission | FREE — no charge to visit the plaza, sculpture, neon sign park, skywalk, or riverfront trail. |
| Parking | Free parking lot at the top of the hill at the south end of 13th St (off I-244 exit 4B). Walk down the trail, across the pedestrian skywalk, to the plaza. Additional parking along Riverside Drive. |
| Directions | From I-244: take Exit 4B, drive east on US Hwy 64, bear right onto the 13th St exit, turn right onto 13th St. Drive 0.5 miles to the parking lot. Follow the trail and skywalk to the sculpture. |
| Nearby | Route 66 Neon Sign Park (south side of Cyrus Avery Bridge) | Arkansas River Trails | Tulsa’s 11th Street Route 66 corridor (Buck Atom Muffler Man, Blue Dome District, Meadow Gold sign) |
| Accessibility | Note: access to the sculpture involves stairs from the parking lot via the pedestrian skywalk. No elevator is currently available. Those with mobility challenges may prefer to view from Riverside Drive. |
| Best Time | Dusk and after dark for the Neon Sign Park and bridge views. Morning for quiet photography of the East Meets West sculpture. Spring and fall for the most comfortable conditions. |
The Centennial Plaza and Route 66’s Founding History
The Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza matters not just as a beautiful roadside attraction but as the most historically grounded stop on the entire Route 66 corridor. This is the place where the highway’s story is most directly connected to a specific person, a specific bridge, and a specific set of decisions that shaped American transportation history. Avery’s success in routing Route 66 through Tulsa and Oklahoma rather than through Kansas and Colorado had consequences that reverberate a century later: the towns, diners, motels, and roadside attractions that grew up along the Oklahoma corridor owe their existence directly to decisions made by the man the plaza honors.
The plaza was developed as part of Tulsa’s Vision 2025 program, an infrastructure and quality-of-life investment initiative that included significant Route 66 enhancements throughout the city. The first phase of the plaza — the flag display — was completed in July 2008 and dedicated on August 7, 2008. The “East Meets West” sculpture was added in 2012, and the Neon Sign Park opened in 2020. The plaza is an ongoing project, with a full Route 66 museum proposed for a site adjacent to the existing parking lot (no opening date has been established as of this writing).
For travelers arriving during the Route 66 Centennial year of 2026 — the 100th anniversary of the highway’s commissioning on November 11, 1926 — the Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza carries a particular resonance. This is where it all began. The Centennial celebration will bring events and commemorations to Tulsa throughout 2026; see the Route 66 Centennial 2026 page for the most current event calendar.
Tulsa’s Route 66 Corridor: What Else to See
The Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza sits at the western end of Tulsa’s 26-mile Route 66 corridor — the longest urban stretch of the Mother Road in Oklahoma and one of the richest concentrated Route 66 experiences anywhere on the highway. A full day of Tulsa Route 66 exploration, beginning at the Blue Whale of Catoosa in the east and ending at the Centennial Plaza on the Arkansas River in the west, is one of the great Route 66 days available to any traveler on the Oklahoma corridor.
Buck Atom Space Cowboy and the 11th Street Neon Corridor
Route 66 through Tulsa follows 11th Street through a stretch of genuine neon and roadside Americana that rewards slow driving and frequent stops. Buck Atom, a Muffler Man-style giant figure holding a rocket ship rather than a car part, stands outside a 1950s-era gas station converted to a Route 66 souvenir shop at 1347 E 11th St. Next door, Decopolis 66 offers souvenirs, gifts, a dairy bar, and an art deco-themed experience. The 2024 addition of Stella Atom — a 19-foot cosmic cowgirl designed after the shop owner’s mother, wearing a Route 66 shield as a belt buckle — makes the corner one of the most photogenic stops on Tulsa’s 11th Street.
The Meadow Gold Neon Sign
At 11th Street and Quaker Avenue, the restored Meadow Gold neon sign — an iconic Route 66 Tulsa landmark — sits atop a brick pavilion with historical plaques. Restored in 2009 as part of the Vision 2025 Route 66 improvements, the sign is now illuminated and represents one of the finest examples of preserved Route 66 neon in the state. Clocks were added to the sign in 2016.
The Blue Dome District
The Blue Dome District in downtown Tulsa — named for the historic blue-domed service station at 2nd Street and Elgin Avenue — sits on the original 1926 Route 66 alignment through the city. The surrounding blocks offer some of Tulsa’s best restaurants, bars, and shops, and the architecture of the district gives a sense of what Route 66 Tulsa looked like in its early decades.
The Blue Whale of Catoosa
Approximately 15 miles east of downtown Tulsa in Catoosa, the Blue Whale of Catoosa — a giant smiling blue whale in a pond, built in 1972 as an anniversary gift — is one of Route 66’s most beloved free attractions. Pairing the Blue Whale with the Centennial Plaza makes for a deeply satisfying east-to-west day across the Tulsa Route 66 corridor. The whale is best visited in the morning; the Centennial Plaza after dark for the Neon Sign Park.
Planning Your Route 66 Visit to Tulsa
Tulsa typically falls on Day 3 or 4 of a standard westbound Route 66 trip from Chicago, following the Kansas corridor and arriving via the northeastern Oklahoma towns of Quapaw, Miami, Vinita, and Claremore. The city is large enough to warrant a full day’s stop — or even two — if the Route 66 corridor is being explored thoroughly.
For planning the full Oklahoma experience, the Route 66 in Oklahoma guide covers all 400+ drivable miles of the state’s corridor from the Kansas border to the Texas line. For broader trip planning, the Route 66 Complete Travel Guide addresses all eight states. The Best Time to Drive Route 66 guide and the How Long Does It Take to Drive Route 66 page help calibrate pacing, and the Route 66 Road Trip Budget Guide and Route 66 Packing List and Vehicle Prep Checklist round out the pre-trip preparation resources.
Traveling by motorcycle or solo? The Route 66 Solo Traveler and Motorcycle Guide is tailored specifically for independent travelers who approach the highway on their own schedule and terms. And for navigation — Tulsa’s Route 66 alignment can require some attention to follow correctly through the city — the Maps, Apps, and Navigation guide is essential.
More Route 66 Travel Resources
Route 66 — Complete Travel Guide — All 2,448 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica: history, alignments, and what to see in every state.
Route 66 in Oklahoma — The complete guide to Oklahoma’s 400+ drivable miles, including every major attraction, town, and stop on the state’s historic corridor.
Blue Whale of Catoosa — Tulsa’s most beloved Route 66 attraction, just 15 miles east. Pair it with the Centennial Plaza for the ultimate Tulsa Route 66 day.
Pops 66 Soda Ranch — Arcadia, Oklahoma — The iconic 66-foot soda bottle and 700+ varieties of soda, just east of Oklahoma City. A natural next stop after Tulsa heading westbound.
Totem Pole Park — Foyil, Oklahoma — The World’s Largest Concrete Totem Pole, northeast of Claremore. A remarkable folk art landmark between Tulsa and the Kansas border.
Famous Round Barn in Arcadia — The 1898 National Register landmark just east of Oklahoma City, on the westbound corridor from Tulsa.
Oklahoma City on Route 66 — The next major city west of Tulsa on the Mother Road, with its own rich Route 66 history and landmarks.
Lucille’s Historic Gas Station — Hydro, Oklahoma — One of the most evocative vintage service station stops on the western Oklahoma corridor.
Route 66 Centennial 2026 — The 100th anniversary of Route 66’s commissioning, November 11, 2026. The Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza is ground zero for the celebration.
Best Time to Drive Route 66 — Season-by-season weather and crowd guidance for planning your Tulsa and Oklahoma visit.
Route 66 with Kids Planning Guide — Age-by-age pacing strategies and the best family stops across all eight states.
Maps, Apps, and Navigation — How to navigate Tulsa’s Route 66 alignment and find every stop with confidence.
Route 66 Solo Traveler and Motorcycle Guide — Tailored guidance for independent travelers and motorcyclists on the Mother Road.
