Route 66 logos stenciled on The Mother Road

Drivers may come across Route 66 road graphics while driving through Gallup. The designs are part of an effort to reconize the famous roadway that passes through Gallup. The road, established in 1926, originally stretched nearly 2,500 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles. [Photo by Daniel Zollinger/Independent]

Independent Staff

GALLUP — Back in the 1930s, when most of Route 66 was constructed, no one thought it would ever be forgotten.

Despite a successful television series and scores of songs singing its praises, every year traces of the historic route from Chicago to Los Angeles are being paved over, and there's been a big movement in recent years to bring it to people's attention.

Area residents can see the latest effort alongside Historic Route 66 as they go through Gallup, Milan and Grants.

State highway officials during the past few weeks have been stenciling in the Route 66 logo along the route in New Mexico.

Delane Barros, spokeswoman for the state highway department, District 6, said 30 of the logos will be stenciled in using white paint this summer along the historic route. Nine will eventually go up in Gallup and six more between Milan and Grants.

The state had hoped to have the logos all up by now, she said, but weather problems caused delay.

The idea for the logos, she said, came from Star Gonzales, director of the Grants Chamber of Commerce.

Gonzales said a couple of years ago she was thinking about Route 66 and the fact that the longest unbroken stretch of the road in the state goes through Cibola County.

She had been seeking more signage from the state to promote the highway and get more travelers on Interstate 40 to go off the interstate and travel the intact portions of Route 66. While she is still seeking more signage, she came up with the idea of stenciling the logo on the road.

Originally, she said, the idea was to do it on the road itself, but the traffic would cause it to fade. It is now being put on the shoulder of the road, she said.

"Originally, it was black on white, but that didn't show up that well," she said.

The state highway tried several different approaches before deciding on the method that was used to stencil in the logo in Cibola and McKinley counties.

Gonzales said she hopes that the road designs attract more people to travel on the road because that would promote, economic development to both the Gallup and Grants area.