Rare photos of Cyrus Avery unveiled

The Historical Society of Missouri’s Springfield Research Center recently acquired rare photos of Cyrus Avery, known as the Father of Route 66, as a boy and a young man.

Avery, born in 1871, was known as a booster of Tulsa and Oklahoma in general. But the Pennsylvania native moved to Missouri at age 10 and stayed until about age 30, when he relocated to the Sooner State for much of the rest of his life.

The top photo shows Avery, right, with his wife, Essie, and sons Leighton and Gordon, circa 1907.

The photos below show Avery, right, with his sisters, Bertha and Caroline, in the 1880s. The bottom photo shows Avery, left, as a young man with an unidentified friend.

The Douglas County Herald, based in Ava, Missouri, explained how the photographs were found:

SHSMO’s collection of materials on Avery were acquired through a donation in 2016 from Rose Stauber, his great-niece. The Rose Stauber Papers (SP0015) includes previously unseen photos of Avery from the years before his time as a public official. The images show him as a young man, sometimes posing with his sisters or as a young father with his children.

Though he only lived 20 of his 92 years in Missouri, Cyrus remained in touch with his family there, often visiting the Stauber farm in Noel. While owning a farm and raising cattle in Oklahoma, Avery remained active in civic affairs, often running for office either at the state or local level. He was also a Lock Joint Pipe Company salesman from 1950 until his retirement in 1958.

In Oklahoma, Avery became an energetic advocate of the Good Roads Movement, which eventually led to federally designated highways and the creation of U.S. 66 in 1926. Avery was there in Springfield, Missouri, when he and John T. Woodruff sent a telegram to Washington, explaining his group would accept No. 66 for its Chicago-to-Los Angeles highway.

Avery also became president of the U.S. Highway 66 Association. He died in 1963 at age 91.