The Oklahoma Route 66 Association announced that a new Will Rogers Highway monument will be installed along Route 66 in Wellston to commemorate Route 66B, aka the Wellston Gap or Wellston Loop.
It would be the first Will Rogers Highway monument installed in more than a decade.
The association reported:
“When we were looking at ways to commemorate the Centennial of Route 66, we looked at the existing Will Rogers Highway markers and realized there was a pretty big gap between Tulsa and Hydro,” said Rhys Martin, President of the Oklahoma Route 66 Association. “We also saw an opportunity to tell a story about the history of the road and tie it into Will’s strength of connecting people.”
Working with the Butcher BBQ Stand in Wellston, the Association identified a spot along the highway that would tell a story about citizen engagement and civic pride.
“Back when Highway 66 was being paved, a decision was made at a state level to bypass downtown Wellston and pave a straighter path, where State Highway 66 runs today,” Martin continued. “Of course, that left main street in the dirt. The townspeople and local leaders advocated to have the original part of the road paved, too, and were successful … thus closing the so-called Wellston Gap.”
The new Will Rogers Highway monument is scheduled to be installed on June 18, when the Route 66 Centennial Caravan arrives.
TheRoute-66.com picks up the rest of the story after Wellston successfully fought the highway’s realignment:
… the US Bureau of Public Roads stood by its decision to bypass Wellston and paved the “Gap” just the same. But the state Highway Commission had to abide by the court order and it paved the “Loop” through the town with Portland concrete in 1932 and built the Captain Creek bridge the following year. As it was not a U.S. highway, but a state highway, it was renamed as State Highway 66, becoming the first section of road to be named as a state highway “66” between Los Angeles and Chicago (many states would follow this practice fifty years later when US 66 was decommissioned).
Many years later, after U.S. Highway 66 was decertified and Route 66 became OK-66, this original “loop” through Wellston or State Highway OK-66 was renamed as OK-66B.
The federal Route 66 across the “Gap” was built in 1933 and also had its own bridges across Captain Creek, it was paved in Portland Concrete all the way to the Oklahoma county line.
The town in the end failed: the loop did not manage to attract traffic through the town: in 1939 only 7 cars passed every hour through town compared to 600 passing south of the town.
The association won a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation to cover part of the new monument’s cost, and it launched a fundraiser to cover the rest.
Interested parties wishing to contribute should contact the association directly or make a donation online. Those who contribute $750 or more will have their name or business inscribed on the back of the monument.
Other Will Rogers Highway markers stand in Vinita, Claremore, Clinton, Tulsa, Texola, Afton and Hydro in Oklahoma, plus Galena, Kansas, and Joplin, Missouri.
A map of the markers is below:
(Image of the Will Rogers Highway Memorial in Texola, Oklahoma)