A Route 66 Neon Park is planned to be developed in a median of Route 66 in the mid-Missouri town of St. Robert, according to a news release from a Pulaski County Route 66 organization, and a Kickstarter campaign has been launched to help the park become a reality.
The neon park will be in St. Robert George M. Reed Roadside Park. According to the news release:
Eligible signs would be those that were originally along the Route between 1926 and 1985, have been abandoned and do not have a home, and would not otherwise return to the Mother Road without a parksuch as this. Currently the roadside park is home to a US Army M-60 tank which will remain within the park, and be embellished to tell the story of the importance of Route 66 as a thoroughfare for transporting war material during WWII. […]
The opportunity for this development began in November 2013 during the “The Road Ahead” Strategic Roundtable hosted by the World Monument Fund in Anaheim, CA, where Beth Wiles, Executive Director of the Pulaski County Tourism Bureau, was in attendance. One of the speakers there was Jim Thole, chairman of the Neon Heritage Preservation Committee of the Route 66 Association of Missouri, who described the Association’s vision to establish a neon park in Missouri for orphaned Route 66 neon signs.Ensuing discussions between those two parties then led to St. Robert becoming the proposed home for these former icons of the Mother Road.
The Kickstarter campaign seeks to raise $60,000 by June 4:
More information may be found at the Pulaski County Route 66 Preservation here. The Route 66 Association of Missouri and City of St. Robert also are partners in the effort.
West Hollywood, California, has a small neon park on its stretch of Route 66, but not all the signs came from the Mother Road.
(An rendering of one section of the Route 66 Neon Park in St. Robert, Missouri)