If you went downtown for the big Route 66 Centennial celebration back in June, you probably assumed that was the show. A day-long street festival, a car show, chalk art crawling across Aspen Avenue, the Disney movie playing on Heritage Square that night. It felt like a finale. It wasn't. It was the opening act for a season that runs through October, and the events still ahead offer more ways to take part in the centennial.
The centennial calendar continues with a range of events across Flagstaff.
The Same Century-Old Car, Twice
Here's a detail that only makes sense if you've been paying attention to more than one corner of this town's centennial programming. Lowell Observatory's new tour, called Cosmic Highways, lets visitors see Percival Lowell's own 1911 Stevens-Duryea, the car he actually drove around Flagstaff more than a century ago. It's parked at the observatory as a piece of local history tied to the astronomer who put this town on scientific maps long before Route 66 existed.
Last year, that same car turned up somewhere else entirely. It was the oldest vehicle entered in the Mother Road Classic Car Show, rolling down Aspen Avenue next to Corvettes and resto-mod trucks a century its junior. Two institutions, one on a hill above town and one in a parking lot downtown, are drawing from the same object to tell two different stories about the same place. The car links the observatory and downtown through a shared piece of local history within the centennial program.
The Next Route 66 Concert at the Orpheum
The Orpheum Theater on Aspen Avenue has been Flagstaff's entertainment anchor since 1917, and this summer it's running a Music of Route 66 concert series with Discover Flagstaff. The next listed date is September 5.
| Date | Artist | Genre | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| September 5 | UNION32 | Route 66 Concert Series | Ticketed |
The September 5 concert keeps the Orpheum's all-ages centennial series on the calendar, alongside the other events planned across town.
The Car Show That Funds Local Charities
Wheeler Park and the City Hall parking lot, one block from the Orpheum, host the Mother Road Classic Car Show on August 15. This one is worth knowing the backstory on, because the organization behind it changes how you should think about the event.
The Route 66 Car Club of Flagstaff is a 501(c)3, and the Mother Road Classic is its primary fundraiser of the year. In 2024, the show distributed more than $8,000 to organizations that directly benefit Flagstaff residents. It's a volunteer car club that happens to hold its fundraiser during the centennial year, in the shade of the trees next to Wheeler Park, with room for roughly 200 vehicles across 24 categories including Muscle, Resto Mod, and Vintage.
Spectators get in free. The club's own registration page puts it plainly: "Our annual car show is back in downtown Flagstaff!" You're watching your neighbors' hobby fund your neighbors' causes.
A National Car Club Chose Flagstaff
Between September 8 and 12, Flagstaff hosts the All Thunderbird Convention, a gathering built around both the Mother Road and the Ford Thunderbird specifically. The convention brings a national car club to Flagstaff during the centennial year, adding another event to the Route 66 calendar.
Discover Flagstaff's own materials describe the town as "the only 7,000-foot elevation, pine-fresh, dark-sky city on the Mother Road," and events like this one are the reason that line keeps getting repeated by people who have no reason to repeat it except that it happens to be true.
How the Fall Closes It Out
The programming doesn't stop when the weather turns. On October 10 and 11, the Orpheum screens the feature-length documentary Route 66: The Main Street of America, part of a run that also plays in Holbrook, Kingman, and Winslow that same week, meaning Flagstaff gets first crack at it locally.
If you'd rather walk than sit, Freaky Foot Tours runs a two-hour Route 66 Centennial Walking Tour covering both the original 1926 alignment and the 1934 reroute, about 1.3 miles through downtown and the historic Southside neighborhood. The tour is family-owned and operated by guides with five generations of Arizona roots, and it stops at specifics most residents drive past without registering, including the neon tower at the DuBeau, built to compete directly with the Downtowner motel across the street, and the site of a boarding house built for Basque sheepherders. The tour is partially funded by the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona and offers another way to explore local history on foot.
For something quieter, the Museum of Northern Arizona's exhibition "Wagon Road to Mother Road" traces how the highway reshaped the region, drawing in part on a dig conducted by archaeologist David Purcell in Petrified Forest National Park. It's the kind of exhibit that rewards a Tuesday afternoon more than a weekend crowd.
The Pattern Underneath the Calendar
Together, these events show the breadth of the centennial calendar, from concerts and a car show to walking tours, a documentary screening, and a museum exhibition.
If you've caught yourself thinking the Route 66 centennial already happened, it hasn't. Its calendar continues through October with concerts, car shows, walks, screenings, and exhibits across Flagstaff.
For more of what's actually worth putting on the calendar in Flagstaff, or a conversation about what it's like to call this town home year-round, reach out to Randall Dagenais Luxury Group. We're here, and we're paying attention too.
