next on Gallery America.

We're hitting the open road to discover the art and spirit along America's most iconic highway.

Route 66.

I love, old gas pumps.

I love neon signs.

I love the architecture on the old cars.

For one man childhood road trip sparked a lifelong passion for the mother Road And I do it to document how the route evolves, how it changes.

to me.

Route 66 has come to symbolize all the roadside America, and Meet John Hargrove.

He loves the nostalgia of route 66, but not the travel.

So he brought the highway home.

Building a museum on his own property that showcases some of the most famous attractions.

did a few thing that I just wanted to look at, and it started drawing people in, and, Now the world comes to him.

How are you guys doing today?

and I started realizing, hey, this this a lot of fun meetin people from Germany and England.

That and more coming up now.

Hello Oklahoma, Welcome to gallery america.

2026 makes 100 years since route 66 was first established.

So today, we're hitting the road to see a sample of the art and culture that you can find on the artist, Jerry McClanahan, is no stranger to this art and culture.

He grew up watching the rout 66 sites go by on his family's road trips.

Now he's revisiting those sites, painstakingly capturin the magic of this historic road.

Take a look.

This is my old 57 Chevy four door station wagon.

It's born the same year I was like millions of people.

Artist Jerry McClanahan loves the freedom he feels behind the wheel.

And one stretch of road stirs a passion in his heart like no other.

And.

It' kind of a mythical road to me.

Route 66 has come to symbolize all the roadside America, all the American cars, the fins and chrome, the neon.

It's kind of the cultural symbol of all that.

In 1926, the American Association of State Highway Officials created a unified system by assigning number to an existing network of roads.

The lines for route 66 ran from Chicago to downtown Los Angeles.

The roads were once as wild as the west itself.

But wagon trails gave way to pavement, and the Mother Road was born.

Suddenly Americans could see the country from the comfort of the family car.

I was born here in Oklahoma in 1957.

My dad was a poor oil field.

Okie.

My mom was a poor Arky and work wasn't that great for them.

In 1958, we moved out to California, where he got good jobs in the oil field.

And by the next yea we were able to come back down route 66 on vacation to visit grandparents in Oklahoma and Arkansas.

And we're sittin on the back of the family Ford, and I'm looking out the windo and seeing all this cool stuff.

There's billboards, there's neon signs.

There's attractions like see the snakes, see the live buffalo, see the groundhogs.

buy Leather whips, India moccasins and bows and arrows.

And they counted down the mileage.

And I'm counting down the mileage to each of these really cool places.

And wanting to stop desperately.

And it would go ten miles.

Five miles, one mile, 1000 yard.

Whoa!

You missed it.

Because, dad, we just passed by.

And most of the time he was so focused on driving hom that it was like pulling teeth.

So from 69 to about 81, I didn't have any route 66 experience as a kid.

I would sit in the back seat of the car doodling little things along the road, and my mother back me up on this.

I was trying to draw map of route 66 because I could see, here's the atlas and this is the straight line, but there's really curved.

I had no way of doing angles and degrees and getting it right, but I was trying to draw maps of route 66 in the back seat of the car, and.

Jerry's experience was so profound that in his early 20s, he took his father on a trip.

And this time he was in the driver's seat.

It was a memory that I could let go of.

So in 1981, we took the trip back out west, and this time we stopped at everything.

We went to Meteor Crater.

We looked at Dinosaur Caverns.

We went to Clines Corners, bu there were many sections of road that were a mystery.

Hey, Jerry.

Jerry.

Yeah.

How's the.

How's the season been for you?

A little slow in the winter here.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, it' that time of year.

Everything.

Jerr put the missing pieces together by making trip after trip.

I'm slowly working on the East to perdition.

You know, the one we got now goes west, but it's up and down the route.

Researching every detail he could find in Chandler.

He move through the motorcycle museum, catching up with old friends and looking for new material for his books and painting.

You should thank you.

They are bikes from the era.

Bikes from racing.

It's a really cool collection.

I mean, look at the scooter with the windshield.

Man, that is stylin.

I started out on 66 wanting basically to take photos.

Above us is some of the machinery and then being an artist I said, okay, this is my subject matter, I'll start drawing it but I need more subject matter.

So I did more driving and more research.

They are bikes like a land speed racer bike here.

It's good for me to visit places like this and take photos, because I can never know what type of bike or car or airplane or whatever I'm going to need a photo of someday.

And I do it t document how the route evolves, how it changes.

I'm researching updates for my guidebooks.

This is CBS station, an historic building along route 66.

I am driving the alignment and photographing street signs, new sections where they've added a traffic circle or where they changed a stoplight.

And you got to take them every time you see them, cause you never know when something seemed to disappear or be changed.

I'm photographing everything I photographed before.

Over again because it's a different light.

Cemeteries and historic buildings and all of these aspects.

The American automobiles, the roadside americana, the landscape, the history.

It gels for me in route 66.

When I remember route 66 from my childhood, and it's got this golden glow to it, and everything's so bright and colorful.

So that's what influences my artwork.

In 1985, route 66 was decertified, but a determined group would not let it die.

They lobbied the halls of power until the Department of Transportation designated the historic route 66.

Jerr published a popular map of 66.

This was the set of eight maps that we did of route 66, but new facts and new attractions.

Map has pen and ink illustrations that I've done of things along route six convinced him that a definitive guide was needed.

So when I show somebody the guidebook, you know, I'll point out here is a here's a historic motel.

There's many exciting places to stop at on the route.

The Pony Bridge that's west of El Reno, Oklahoma.

The 38 stands.

Here's an exciting section of road to drive or some of the historic buildings.

Interesting, exciting places on route 66 for a person to enjoy.

Places like the Round Barn, places like, the Rock cafe.

The Blue Whale.

It will tell them places where they will enjoy visiting museums and attractions.

It will tell them places they might want to eat out that have a good, authentic, roadside atmosphere.

It highlights the classic motels that have been restored or maintained along route 66.

There's lots of side trips.

There's lots of dead ends.

You can take this one.

Want to?

This will tell person how to drive route 66 from Chicago to L.A.

Or the other way around.

Everything to help a person enjoy route 66 trip and have fun.

A few years back, like minded friends convinced Jerry that he needed to live on or near the highway.

That is his obsession for.

Him, his home and studio joined the many other roadside attractions.

Well, welcome to my gallery.

This is where I get to displa and exhibit all of my artwork.

Things that I've painted and drawn about route 66 over the years.

Some of my favorite paintings, like this one.

Here it is, kids with the Jackrabbit Trading Post near Joseph City, Arizona.

It's the family vacation experience.

You got the crying baby.

You got the mother who's kind of getting a little harried at this time.

The cowboy kid has a cap, pistol.

Now, that's for my personal experience.

I had a cap pistol in the 60s, and I was shooting out the window.

Dropped it on route 66 in eastern Arizona, and my dad would not stop and go back and get it.

So I cried and cried and cried.

Not make sure he regretted no stopping to get my cap pistol.

Come on in.

Good to meet you.

I'm Jerry.

Well, nice to meet you, Linda.

Oh, how are you doing?

People got ten.

They are usually using my eas 66 guide because I invite them to stop by.

And I put my cell phone number in there, and I have a map drawn to the place.

I'll come in and I'm open whenever somebody comes by.

I've been, photographing and researching route 66 since 1981.

I have made friends around the world because I've got to visit with them here somewhere, and my dad wouldn't stop it.

So now I go back and research all the things that I didn't see and I do paintings of them, I do guidebooks.

weekend, a holiday.

If I'm home, I'll visit them.

They want to talk about their trip.

They want to ask questions about route 66 “57 Chevy”, Jerry even met his wife, Mariko.

Guess where she found him using the easy guide.

She visited my gallery that fall, and I said to kind of keep.

You know thank you so much for having us.

you're welcome, thanks for comin by!

Most days, she's writing her popular blog about route 66.

While Jerry works in his studio.

My paintings are based on something real on route 66.

The current one I'm working on now is from a, historic photograph of a African-American owned business about six blocks north of 66, in Springfield, Missouri.

This is back in the Green Book era.

The painting is set in the 40s, and it features my client's 1930 model AA.

Woody pulled up in front of this restaurant.

You.

Kind of come along this commissioned paintings is part of the biggest part of my, gallery right now.

I will have people from Australia, for instance, come through on a tour and they will talk to me and see my artwork and take my business card.

And then later they send me a message to basically hey, mate, let's do a painting.

I want you to paint my car.

Mariko, come take a look, please.

Okay.

You can see I've been working on the middle tree in the distance.

It has to be lighter than the rest.

It has to have some body and definition.

I think it's about down to a little more detail.

You like it to look good?

See?

It helps to have another set of eyes.

And I appreciate that.

I love, oh gas pumps.

I love neon signs.

I love the old architecture.

I love old cars.

I'm an old car nut.

I just never run out of anything along 66 to be excited about.

And we're still discovering abandoned sections of the road and mysteries about it.

It's it's it's like a treasure hunt, a treasure map.

Jury believes that route 6 nostalgia is picking up speed, and is using his artwork to preserve the memory of the mother Roa in the imagination of the world.

You look at Tulsa.

That city has jumped on route 66, and with both feet, they have the statue at the Cyrus Avery Bridge.

They're planning museum, a Frisco locomotive and an old Derrick.

Tulsa is really exciting.

If you're a route 66 fan.

The story of historic route 66 is about the people along their towns and their lives.

It's a tale that artists and writers like Jerry love to tell.

For speaking for myself personally, what I really love about route 66 goes back to that time and the back seat of the car in the 60s.

The excitement and frustration.

Seeing all the cool stuff and not stopping it was the Wild West.

It was mountains.

It was.

It was just a super exciting.

The Arcadia Round Barn is one of route 66 most iconic sights but it was almost lost to time.

Ten years ago we talked to its legendary tour guide, Mr.

Sam, about the community effort that it took to save it.

Check it out We?

Well.

Hi, everybody.

Hi.

Good to see you all this morning.

I'll tell you what I want to tell a story or two.

And just a minute.

Would you like to come in and join us?

Well.

All right.

What?

Come on in.

We'll just, we'll start right inside the door here.

The barn was built by Mr.

Odor in 18 and 98.

It's 100.

And what?

115 years old?

And, it's still standing.

Had cows and horses.

All these were pens all the way around.

He put his loose hay upstairs that he cut down there in the bottoms.

He knew that the wind blew very hard down here in Indian Territory.

So instead of building a squar barn with the flat side on him, the wind can hit that and blow it down.

I'm going to build a round bar.

And so that's why he built a round barn.

The wind can go this way and this way.

That actuall is why he built around barbed.

He tells th stories because he lived them.

The only thing to do, back when I was a kid, was to get in the car and go driving on Sunday afternoon for an hour or two.

When we would come down rout 66, we'd drive by it real slow.

Looked real good back then.

Now let me show you this picture right here.

This was in 1988.

There were two elderly girls and owned the barn.

And they came to us about 12 or farmers out here and they said, hey, the old barn is going to fall down if somebody don't do something about it.

So we've decided tha if you all would take the barn, restore i back to its original condition, just let folks come in for free.

Just enjoy the history.

Hay.

Which is give you the barn.

So we thought and thought fo about 30s said, okay, we'll do.

That was in 1988, and just four years later it looked like this.

Most of the labor was was volunteer.

It was Luke Robinson.

He was the main main person.

He was a carpenter, literally.

And he had a whole bunch of knowledge upstairs to know how to do it.

He and a group of peopl got together and they were able to, restore the barn and Luke Robinson tried when he was restoring the barn to, to make it just as authenti as he possibly, possibly could by using type of nails that they tried to use back then.

And we kept about 70% of the old wood.

They set up a sawmill down on the river down there, and they made two by fours for upstairs, built the out of the same type of trees.

The old, old trees fro down there splash them together.

And then he soaked into the river.

And then he brought them up here, just like Mr.

Odor They had a great big, tall crane.

Now, Mr.

Odor didn't have that.

He had two mules and two helpers.

And to this day, we don't know how he got those rafters up there.

If Luke had not done what he did, well, hey, we wouldn't be sitting here today.

I think a bunch of old farmers did pretty good job.

now or just down the road to meet John Hargrove.

John grew up on route 6 and has made it his life's work to preserve its history here at his very own museum.

Let's check it out.

Route 66 is a highway that runs through the minds of dreamers across the country.

1932 was kind of the golden year for hot rods.

John Hargrove is one of those dreamers.

When I bought this, I got it for $100 and it's for all the pieces.

But instead of having his head in the clouds, he's busy building his dreams.

Ready?

Okay.

Sometimes I'll go a month or two without driving it, so sometimes I'll drive it virtually every day.

He started as a boy, building his bike out of spare part alongside America's Main Street.

Yeah, I grew up on northwest 23rd Street.

I threw papers up and down 23rd Street, and that's route 66.

I remember back, got 12, 13 years old.

That's the road that goes to California.

That's.

That's all.

I knew much about it.

I didn't realize it.

It was called route 66.

It was a road to California.

John spent his life fixing things as a mechanic.

There isn't much he hasn't worked on cars, airplanes and motorcycles.

When he retired, he decide to build the ultimate workshop.

And he picked a piece of land along route 66 in Arcadia.

Bought this land.

There wasn't anything here except trees and dirt.

And in August and 1998, despite his love of the Mother Road, he doesn't care much for traveling.

So John decided to bring the sights of route 66 to his roadside museum.

Like the Jackrabbi Trading Post, the Wigwam Motel, and he even has an old filling station.

And I've done icons of route 66.

Anything that used to be on route 66, or still is that I can figure out how to make a miniature of to scale.

I do, I've got the blue whale from Catoosa, I've got the Twin Arrows from Arizona, the Kachina dolls from the route 66 Museum in Elk City.

I don't have a Cadillac stuck in my ground, but I've got Volkswagen stuck in the ground.

Same depth and the same angle as the Cadillac Ranch.

I didn't want a Cadillac.

I'm not a Cadillac guy.

I'm not taking it.

While visitors enjoy the back half of the bug.

The real attention getter is up on the second floor.

It serves as a window to the museum and is painted like Herbie the Love Bug.

And I didn't have it out there a day.

And these people from Germany were touring route 66, and they pulled in and they could barely speak English.

But this, it was one Germany, Germany, Volkswagen.

That's thought, well, and, it's been going like that ever since.

That's 2004 when I put that out.

I bought it.

I bought a gas pump, and I thought, well how do I want to display this?

And I thought, well, I'll just been building Tin Man standing there pumping gas.

And after I got the tin man, i thought, he needs a dog.

So I, I made the littl metal dog and, little tin dog.

Everybody calls it Toto.

In Switzerland.

I said, hey, I'll take your picture.

We're at.

And he says, at the petrol man.

I said, you just named him.

So I put petrol man on the tin Man.

How are you guys doing today?

Every day, curious travelers turn up the gravel drive to see the sights that John created.

That's a ten minute drive from school.

I just been living route 66.

Kind of didn't really know where I was going to go and didn't know.

And I didn't realize people come from other countries just to drive route 66.

And, did a few thing that I just wanted to look at, and it started drawing people in, and, and I started realizing, hey, this this a lot of fun meeting people from Germany and England, Australia, Spain.

I've had as many as 75 or 100 people here.

There's groups that cruise 66.

If you can make somebody happier in life, you know that that's a boost.

What makes John happy is getting his hands into the grease and bringing broken motors back to life.

Is love is building hot rods and customs.

Like when he turned a Chevy Malibu into a three wheeled auto cycle.

This is my passion.

What you're looking here.

And this is my passion.

If I don't have this, I'm miserable.

I've never watched a football, baseball, basketball game.

I have no interest in, mechanical stuff.

My first wife, left m because I stayed in the garage too much.

And really, she did the right thing, cause I'm a lot worse now.

This is a, 1914 model Ford.

This is a very original.

It's had, different engines put in it over the years.

It's got it now.

Has electric starter.

Then this car was brand new.

There was no price rose.

John spent many late nights paintin and putting together attractions like the Big boy and the motorcycle from Easy Rider just to bring someone a smile.

I like people, I'm probably real hard to be around all the time, but I enjoy meeting people.

You know?

That's what make America so great is we're all different kinds of people.

If you're ever out driving this stretch of route 66, stop in everyone's welcome.

Basically, as the gates open, I'm open.

If the gates shut I want privacy or need privacy.

I put it that way.

Well, that's all the time we have for Gallery America.

Thank you so much for joining us.

As always, you can see past episodes by going to our website, oeta.tv/gallery America.

And don't forget to follow us on Instagram at OETA Gallery.

We'll see you next time.

Till then, stay arty.

Oklahoma!