The Mother Road Turns 100 and Amarillo Throws the Party — Cameras Included
Amarillo has spent 2026 doing what it does better than almost any city on Route 66: leaning all the way into the myth. This is the Mother Road's centennial year, and the Panhandle has treated it less like an anniversary than a season-long civic identity.
The latest chapter rolled through town Monday, Aug. 3, when The Great American Road Rally: Celebrity Edition — a CW reality show hosted by Ian Ziering — taped a 5 p.m. stop and car show at Arts in the Sunset, 3701 Plains Blvd. The celebrity roster hadn't been released by press time, but the episode is set to debut Sept. 2, beaming Amarillo's stretch of 66 to a national audience. "Being featured as a stop on this incredible journey and on The CW Network is a great opportunity to showcase Amarillo's authentic Route 66 heritage and Western spirit to audiences across the country," said Luz Aguilar, tourism manager for Visit Amarillo.
The Road Rally is a small piece of a much bigger year. Back in June, the ten-day Texas Route 66 Festival packed 66 events across Amarillo and the Panhandle towns of Shamrock, Adrian, Vega and beyond, with a free grand finale in the Historic District — live music, food trucks, car shows and a parade of vintage Airstreams. That was the peak, but the centennial programming has kept a steady pulse through the summer.
For music fans, the marquee is still ahead: Asleep at the Wheel brings its Route 66 Centennial Tour to the Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, Aug. 21. Ray Benson's western-swing institution playing a Route 66 tour date in the actual buckle of the Panhandle is about as on-the-nose as programming gets, and gloriously so.
Why does a centennial matter to a live-music blog? Because Route 66 is not nostalgia here — it's infrastructure. The tourists who pull off I-40 for a photo at the Big Texan or a milkshake on Sixth Avenue are the same foot traffic that fills the patios at the Route 66 Visitors Center's "Summer Nights on 6th," that wanders into Golden Light or Smokey Joe's on a whim, that turns a random Tuesday into a paying gig for a local band. A hundredth birthday with a CW camera crew attached is free national advertising for a corridor that Amarillo's musicians work every weekend.
The road built this town's music, from the Nat's swing-era dances to the honky-tonks that still line the old alignment. Turning 100 is a good excuse to remember that — and an even better one to go see a show on the street that started it all.
Sources: Can't Miss with Chip Chandler, Aug. 4 (Brick & Elm); Amarillo Civic Center Complex events (Asleep at the Wheel, Aug. 21); Texas Route 66 Festival