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Research Route 66 is opening the centennial year by slowing things down and listening carefully. Beginning in January, the organization will launch a Route 66 Centennial Speaker Series, a monthly, virtual gathering designed to explore the many stories braided into the Mother Road. The opening session features David Dunaway, whose work centers on voices often left out of the official narrative and the quieter histories that still echo along the pavement. The series is built around the idea that Route 66 is not a single story but a long conversation. Over the course of 2026, speakers will move across subjects that reveal how the highway shaped—and was shaped by—American life. Foodways, Indigenous perspectives, baseball culture, atomic history, and women’s labor all come into view, each topic adding texture to a road too often reduced to postcards and neon. These sessions aim to show Route 66 as a working corridor of ideas and experiences in the twentieth century, one that continues to influence how the nation understands travel, community, and identity. The road becomes less of a relic and more of a living archive. All programs will be offered free of charge and hosted virtually on the second Tuesday of each month throughout the centennial year. Each session begins at 2 p.m. Eastern time, 11 a.m. Pacific, and recordings will be posted to YouTube for those who cannot attend live. The initial lineup includes presentations by Susan Croce Kelly on the invention of Route 66, Cheryl Eichar Jett on women’s work along the road, a multi-voiced discussion of the Mother Road Book featuring Michael Wallis, Ken Busby, and Rhys Martin, T. Lindsay Baker on Route 66 foodways, and a centennial overview by Jim Ross and Shellee Graham. The series will be moderated by Audra Bellmore. The speaker series has been designated an Official Route 66 Centennial Activity by the U.S. Route 66 Centennial Commission, marking it as part of the broader national observance. Registration is currently open for the January session, with additional registration details to follow as the series unfolds. Route 66 Centennial Speaker Series speakers.researchroute66.org  Comments are closed.
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