From Chicago to Santa Monica, 2,451 miles of roadside America. A lot of the motels built along it have closed. Here are the ones still taking reservations.
Green pins: curated featured motels. Teal pins: full directory. Click any pin to go to the listing.
Route 66 ran 2,451 miles, Chicago to Santa Monica. It opened in 1926. During the Depression it gave Dust Bowl families a road west. After the war it was the busiest highway in the country, and every city on it built motels.
The motels that went up along Route 66 in the fifties and sixties were the same ones going up everywhere: neon signs, themed names, a pool in the parking lot. The difference was that on Route 66 there were two thousand miles of them, from the Illinois corn belt to the California desert.
The interstate killed it. By the late seventies, I-40 ran alongside most of the route and the traffic moved. The motels that closed outnumbered the ones that stayed by a lot. The survivors mostly stuck around because somebody refused to walk away.
Nine worth stopping for. Then the full directory, every motel we list in the Route 66 corridor.
Nine that define the route
The motels worth the detour.
Blue Swallow Motel
The sign went up in 1939. The owners who took over in 1991 have been putting the rooms back together since, one at a time, the way they were. The neon still runs at night. Nothing on Route 66 gets photographed more.
Boots Court Motel
Art and Mamie Boots built this in 1939 and put their name on it. The U of low brick buildings around a courtyard is the motor court layout that made sense when pulling off the highway for the night was still a new idea. Clark Gable stayed here. Mickey Mantle too. National Register of Historic Places.
Wigwam Motel & Curios
Seven concrete teepee rooms built in 1950. The same family has run this place since it opened. There is a second Wigwam Village in Rialto, California. The Arizona one is the original and it is on the National Register.
La Posada Hotel
Mary Colter designed this for the Fred Harvey Company in 1930. La Posada was the last of the great Harvey Houses. It sat boarded and empty for decades before the current owners took it on in 1997 and put it back. The Turquoise Room restaurant is still open.
El Rancho Hotel
R.E. Griffith built this in 1937 because the Western productions shooting in New Mexico needed somewhere to stay. John Wayne slept here. So did Humphrey Bogart. The rooms still carry the names of the stars who used them.
Skyliner Motel
The sign is a stylized aircraft on a post, the word Skyliner in lettering that belongs to 1957. The motel shut down and sat empty for years. In 2025 somebody renovated it and opened it back up. Most Route 66 motels that close stay closed. This one came back.
El Trovatore Motel
The El Trovatore opened in 1939. Andy Devine was from Kingman and stayed here on his way through town. Kingman has built a Route 66 museum since, and the El Trovatore is one of the properties it is built around.
Cactus Inn Motel
McLean was the first town Route 66 hit after crossing into Texas from Oklahoma. The panhandle stretch is long and flat and the Cactus Inn has been at this address since the highway was worth something. It still is.
Ohio House Motel
Route 66 officially starts a few blocks from here, at the corner of Michigan and Adams. The Ohio House has been at 600 N LaSalle Drive since 1960. Before the expressways restructured Chicago, this part of the city was the beginning of a very long road west.
All Route 66 corridor motels
Every motel we list in the Route 66 corridor, from Chicago to Santa Monica.