Local officials on Tuesday evening threw the switch on three replicas of Route 66 motel signs at a new neon sign park on the west side of the Arkansas River in Tulsa.
The Tulsa Route 66 Commission broadcast a live video on Facebook. You can see the entire 26-minute ceremony below. The magic occurs about the 25-minute mark:
Mary Beth Babcock, owner of Buck Atoms Cosmic Curios on 66 in Tulsa, posted several photos and short videos from the event:
The Tulsa World reported from the event:
Mayor G.T. Bynum thanked his predecessor, Bill LaFortune, for his initiative in Vision 2025, a sales tax voters passed in 2003 to fund projects like the $500,000 plaza, and drew attention to how unique a part Tulsa played in Route 66.
“And yet for years people from all around the world would come to drive down Route 66, and they’d drive through rural Oklahoma, and then they’d go around Tulsa and go on through the other rural areas because the rural areas were presenting things that people would want to see on Route 66,” Bynum said. […]
Artist David Hoffer, who designed the replicas, tipped his hat to their original designers and spoke of his and Rhys Martin’s efforts to get the designs as historically accurate as possible. Some original colors were unclear, he said, based on a handful of old photos, and other aspects such as whether there was animation and even where neon was laid were up for grabs.
Here’s a look at the park during the daytime from the Tulsa World:
The park is located on Southwest Boulevard (aka Route 66) near West 17th Street in southwest Tulsa.
The three signs represent east Tulsa, west Tulsa and the Admiral Place sections of Route 66. The Will Rogers Motor Court sat on Tulsa’s east side, the Oil Capital Motel stood on the west side, and the Tulsa Auto Court operated on Admiral Place.
The project was funded with Vision 2025 sales-tax funds that were approved by voters in 2003. It is the last remaining Vision 2025 project for Route 66 in Tulsa County.
UPDATE: Here are more images below, with the first from Oklahoma Route 66 Association president Rhys Martin:
And nighttime images from Steve Clem:
It was a significant disappointment to visit Tulsa on October 20, 2021 expressly to shoot the many neon signs, only to find unlit signs at the Neon Park. Some of the other neon signs in Tulsa were not lit either, including Buck’s Atomic Curios.