Where To Stay On Route 66 Travel Guide

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Seven motels, nine classic diners, and the neon that outlived the interstate

Have you ever wondered where to stay along Route 66? The Mother Road runs 2,448 miles (3.939 kilometers) from Chicago, IL to Santa Monica, CA, but the magic isn’t the mileage, it’s in the places that refused to disappear whenn the interstate rolled through. Neon-lit motor courts. Diners still working from recipes written down in the 1950s. Gas stations that stopped selling gas decades ago and became landmarks instead.

We’ve rounded up the best themed stays, classic diners, and retro filling stations to build you trip around. Roughly west-to-east or east-to-west, it doesn’t matter. Just don’t rush it.

Where to Sleep: Neon, Adobe, and Concrete Teepees

Wagon Wheel Motel - Cuba, MO Built in the mid-1930s from hand-cut Ozark stone, the Wagon Wheel has been putting up travelers for close to ninety years, a rare survivor from the road’s earliest days. The cottages look like something out of a fairy tale, the neon sign glows a perfect vintage red, and a careful restoration added modern comfort without sanding off a single rough edge. Cuba’s murals are worth an hour on their own.

Boots Court Motel - Carthage, MO Pure Streamline Moderne: curved white corners, glass block, black trim. Boots opened in 1939 promising “a radio in every room,” and the restored rooms still have one, playing period music, no TV in sight. Clark Gable is said to have stayed here. It’s the most architecturally striking stop on the eastern half of the route.

Blue Swallow Motel - Tucumcari, NM Possibly the most photographed motel in America, and deservedly so. The 1939 courtyard comes with individual garages beside each room, hand-painted details, and a neon sign advertising “100% Refrigerated Air” that has been drawing travelers off the highway for eighty-odd years. Tucumcari’s neon-lined main drag is a destination in itself.

El Vado Motel - Albuquerque, NM A 1937 Pueblo Revival courtyard motel that was nearly lost, then reborn as something better: boutique rooms wrapped around a plaza with a taproom, food stalls, and small shops. You get the vintage bones and the neon Indian-head sign, plus a cold beer without moving the car.

El Rancho Hotel - Gallup, NM “Charm of Yesterday, Convenience of Tomorrow.” Hollywood crews filming Westerns in the red rock country made El Rancho their base, and the guest rooms are still named for the stars who slept in them; Wayne, Hepburn, Reagan, Douglas. The two-story lobby, with its split staircase, log beams, stone fireplace, and Navajo rugs, is one of the great rooms on the entire route.

La Posada Hotel - Winslow, AZ La Posada sits on a different scale from everything else on the list. Mary Colter designed it in 1930 for the Fred Harvey Company, and she is said to have considered it her finest work; it closed in 1957 and came within a whisker of demolition before a decades-long restoration brought it back. Sunken gardens, tile floors, an art collection worth the trip, and the Turquoise Room serving excellent food. Freight trains still rumble past the windows at night, which somehow only improves the experience.

Wigwam Motel - Holbrook, AZ Fifteen concrete teepees, vintage automobiles parked permanently out front, and a sign that asks: “Have you slept in a wigwam lately?” Built in 1950 and run by the same family since, it is small, quirky, and books out fast in summer. Reserve early, this is the one everyone wants.

Where to Eat and Fill Up

Lou Mitchell’s - Chicago, IL Route 66’s traditional first meal, serving since 1923 just off the starting point. Eggs arrive in the skillet they were cooked in, the coffee is fiercely defended, and there’s still a good chance someone hands you a box of Milk Duds on the way in.

Dell Rhea’s Chicken Basket - Willowbrook, IL It started in the 1930s as a lunch counter tucked inside a gas station, where farm wives from the surrounding countryside taught the owner how they fried their chicken. Dell Rhea took the place over in 1963 and put his name on the neon sign; the recipe is still the reason people pull off the Route 66 today.

‍Cozy Dog Drive In - Springfield, IL The birthplace of the corn dog on a stick, invented here in 1949. It’s a shrine as much as a restaurant, hung with Route 66 memorabilia and family history. Order two.

Rock Café - Stroud, OK Built in 1939 from sandstone dug out during the highway’s construction, and rebuilt by its owner after a 2008 fire. The original grill survived. The menu wanders happily from burgers to schnitzel, and the owner’s story famously helped inspire a certain animated Route 66 movie.

Pops 66 - Arcadia, OK The newcomer that earned its place: a 66-foot LED soda bottle towering over the plains and more than 600 kinds of pop inside, shelved by color like stained glass. Grab a burger, grab a bottle of something absurd, and keep driving.

Tower Station & U-Drop Inn - Shamrock, TX A 1936 Art Deco landmark in green and gold neon, crowned by a slender tower that locals say was first sketched in the dirt with a nail. It’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places which now houses a visitor center and no longer pumps fuel.

Midpoint Café - Adrian, TX A white stripe painted across the old roadbed out front marks the halfway point: 1,139 miles (1,833 kilometers) back to Chicago, 1,139 miles (1,833 kilometers) ahead to Los Angeles, Take your photo straddling it, then head inside for a slice of the café's “ugly crust” pie. Serving travelers since 1928.

Snow Cap Drive In - Seligman, AZ Juan Delgadillo built if from scrap lumber (from the nearby Santa Fe Railroad yard) in 1953 and spent his life playing pranks on customers; door handles that come off, mustard bottles that squirt string. His family still runs it, and the gags still land. Seligman is where the Route 66 preservation movement started.

Also worth pulling over for: the restored Gay Parita Sinclair station in Paris Springs Junction, MO; the wonderfully cluttered Hackberry General Store in Kingman, AZ; and Roy’s Motel & Cafe in Amboy, CA, where a relit Googie architectural style sign glows alone in the Mojave.

Plan Your Travel

Route 66 rewards slow travel. Ten days get you across; two weeks lets you enjoy it. Book the small motels well ahead as most have fewer than twenty rooms, and the famous ones fill months out for the summer travel season.

A few things worth sorting before you go: Route 66 guide book & turn-by-turn maps, cooler, dash mount, and film camera.

Then pack light, leave the interstate, and let the old road do the rest.