19-02-2025
New $30K website unveiled as city gears up for Route 66 centennial celebration
Feb. 18—The city of Albuquerque unveiled a $34,000 website with a countdown to the Route 66 centennial celebration and a list of related events in the lead-up to the momentous occasion.
The website was announced Tuesday to a room packed full of officials and community leaders inside the city's Route 66 Visitor Center, which has struggled to consistently keep its doors open since a ribbon cutting in 2022.
In 2026, Albuquerque will celebrate the 100th birthday of its main thoroughfare, U.S. Route 66 — one of the country's first highways.
The event took place outside city limits on the second floor of the unopened center, a project that's been decades in the making and has snowballed into an over $13 million cost.
An opening date for the center has still not been given, but back in October, the Journal was told the center would be running by May.
The new website cost $34,000 to develop, according to Brenna Moore, spokesperson for Visit Albuquerque. It features a countdown to 2026 and will eventually have a list of centennial-related events.
"If you drive down Central Avenue, it really is a hop, skip and a jump away from everything. If you can just visualize getting off the interstate, coming to the visitor center, going down the hill," City Councilor Klarissa Peña said.
Peña, who has long advocated for the center that sits just outside her district, thanked members in attendance from the Hispano Chamber and West Central Community Development Group for their participation in the project, including former West Central Community Development President and her husband, Johnny Peña.
As the centennial creeps closer, Mayor Tim Keller spoke on the excitement for the visitor center to open and the local challenges facing the historic highway.
"We have this facility, and we have it just in time to fully utilize as the headquarters for the centennial," Keller said. "Now that you're all here, I think you can see why it is the absolute perfect spot. It is also something, by the way, no one else in America has."
However, there are other Route 66 visitor centers across the country, including ones in Texas, Illinois, Missouri and one in Kansas that — like New Mexico's — is listed as temporarily closed.
"We also want to do what we can to try and clean up Route 66 in all sorts of ways, and obviously that means things like crime-fighting and that sort of thing, which we're going to try and do as best we can," Keller said.
Preparations for the celebration come at a time when local law enforcement is targeting the historic highway, which in certain corridors has become synonymous with homelessness and open-air drug use.
New Mexico State Police, the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office and District Attorney Sam Bregman announced "Operation Route 66" during a news conference Monday. The operation seeks to crack down on crime in the International District.
In October, the Albuquerque Police Department said dealing with the use of fentanyl and other hard drugs along Central was its top priority.
Additionally, the city's encampment abatement policy shifted in December to prioritize and target tents and carts set along Central. The previous policy listed children's parks and community centers as the areas of most crucial concern.
However, the mayor's office denied the change had any correlation to the upcoming centennial celebrations.
"The recent revision was a routine update to our citywide encampment policy. Since we took office, we have focused on Central," Staci Drangmeister, a spokesperson for Keller, said in a statement.
