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The Lebanon-Laclede County Route 66 Society grew out of a festival in Lebanon celebrating the 75th birthday of Route 66 on Sept. 8, 2001. That first Route 66 Festival was the idea of Bill Wheeler, then the event coordinator for the Kenneth E. Cowan Civic Center, and a local amateur-radio club.

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If you want to see a really big thing in the way of improvement, drive out to the home of Col. A.T. Nelson, where a truly laudable undertaking is in process of development.

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A three-generation family that operated a gas station for seven decades, a husband and wife who welcomed guests into their tourist home for 40 years, and the community leaders who in 1922 successfully campaigned for the future Route 66 to be routed through Lebanon are the newest members of t…

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Phillipsburg High School yearbooks from 1947 to 1956 included advertising from many forgotten Route 66 businesses in Laclede County, such as the Hi-Lite Tourist Court, the Rock Court Café and Service Station, Harris Café, the Bungalow Inn, the McClary Motel, Welch Buick Company and the Munge…

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Two families that pioneered overnight lodging in Lebanon, the five-decade owners of a motel that attracts guests from around the world, a grocer who grew his neighborhood store into a major tourist attraction and a preservationist who envisioned how Lebanon could celebrate its Route 66 herit…

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The first five members of the Laclede County Route 66 Wall of Fame are announced today by the Lebanon-Laclede County Route 66 Society. They will be inducted at the Route 66 Society’s annual membership meeting at 6 p.m. Jan. 24 at the Lebanon-Laclede County Library.

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My name is Wallace S. Moye and I grew up along this road. In fact, I started growing before it was known by any of these names. I was born June 1, 1918, at Brush Creek in Laclede County, Missouri. This place, owned by my Grandfather Speakman, was a small store and post office six miles west …

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“Route 66: Laclede County Memories 1926-1957,” a 96-page collection of local photographs from the Route 66 era, originally published in 2002, will be reprinted by The Laclede County Record in partnership with the Lebanon-Laclede County Route 66 Society.

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Long-planned demolition has begun on the two-story wing of what once was the White Sands Motel on Route 66 near the west entrance to Lebanon. The two-story wing is behind what today is Dowd's Catfish House.

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They were called “public enemies” -- gangsters whose crimes were so notorious, so well-publicized across the nation that they became celebrities. And sometimes public enemies like Bonnie and Clyde and Pretty Boy Floyd were seen traveling Route 66 in Laclede County.

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By 1993, Interstate 44 had displaced Route 66 as the main east-west highway through Laclede County for 36 years. Many businesses that had depended on Route 66 traffic for survival had withered away or adjusted their appeal to local customers. Some businesses that had been built to take advan…

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The restoration of the exterior of the former Underpass Cafe at Phillipsburg should be complete by the end of this year, according to a timetable set by the Lebanon-Laclede County Route 66 Society board at its meeting Tuesday.

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Let the record show that the last overnight guests at Camp Joy were Bobby Justice and seven volunteers who were helping Justice prepare the last Camp Joy cabin for its move to Boswell Park the next morning.

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A sign advertising CAFÉ, FRIED CHICKEN and HOME MADE PIE and a rocket that once stood along the road are all that are left at the former site of the Satellite Cafe and Phillips 66 Space Station, just west of the I-44 Speedway, four miles east of Lebanon on Route 66.

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When the Weaver family bought the old Wood & Goss DX station in 2014 to expand Weaver Auto Sales, some suggested that the Route 66-era building had become an eyesore that should be torn down.

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Bronwen Palilla remembers moving to Lebanon in the 1990s and admiring the beautiful three-story home, then used as a real-estate office, on the north side of Elm Street, also known as Historic Route 66, at Sherman Avenue.

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I grew up 3/4 mile west of Eden on Route 66, which is now on the north side of Interstate 44. After college, I moved to the St. Louis area, employed by McDonnell Aircraft. Taking early retirement in 1996, my wife and I returned to this farm, which was settled in 1853 by my great-great-grandp…

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Highway building in the first decade of the 20th century was considered a local and economic issue; a matter of local civic pride and jobs. In the absence of national standards of construction, each city or county built what it could afford. For this reason, some early highway roadways were …

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Tommy Speaker remembers the day a big four-door car pulled around to the back of his grandfather’s gas station on Route 66 in Lebanon. Three or four people, one of them a woman, got out. They placed violin cases on a picnic table and laid down on the grass to rest. Tommy’s grandfather, Tom B…

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It was the Eden of Route 66. For more than 40 years, Eden Resort, on a hill just west of the Gasconade River on the south side of Route 66, was a self-proclaimed paradise for thousands of travelers, vacationers and fishermen. "It was a showplace,'' Hugh McClure Jr. of nearby Hazelgreen recalled.

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Kelly Hackler bought 7.75 acres west of Phillipsburg last year so he would have a place close to home for fishing. The property includes an acre-and-a-half pond where he has caught some nice catfish.

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In 1993, Wilma Wilson Atkins, a native of the Sleeper area, wrote a book for her granddaughters about her life and the life of her husband, David, who died in 1991. This is an excerpt from the chapter on Route 66, including stories about its construction through 13 acres of the Atkins family farm in 1926. Mrs. Atkins died in 2007. Published with the permission of the Atkins’ daughter, Naomi Atkins Townsend.

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Here are 250 scenes of Laclede County businesses and landmarks along Route 66 during the highway's heyday. The Lebanon-Laclede County Route 66 Society welcomes additional historic photos for this website. Please send jpgs to lebanonroute66@gmail.com.

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June 2017 marks the 100th anniversary of the Ozark Trail, the predecessor to Route 66. It was headline news in June 1917 when Lebanon was selected to be on the Ozark Trail, but, unfortunately, the joy was short-lived. These articles tell the story of the coming and the going of the Ozark Tra…

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If it had been any other highway, Lebanon would have forgotten about Route 66 at 10:45 a.m. Aug. 8, 1957, when the State Highway Commission opened an 8.2-mile stretch of Interstate 44 that bypassed the city.

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On the last full day of his life, Bernie Bollig returned to the parking lot of the former Big Wig Drive-In to reminisce about the two decades he and wife Patty operated their popular restaurant on Lebanon’s Route 66.