TULSA — After a nationwide survey awarded Tulsa the unofficial designation “Capital of Route 66,” work began to make that title official.

Monday, the Oklahoma Route 66 Association announced the effort has borne fruit, and Tulsa won the copyright from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The Tulsa Route 66 Commission did the work of securing that title, according to the new release from the state association, but as the state association’s president, Rhys Martin, told KRMG - there’s a lot of cross-pollination between the various groups dedicated to the history and promotion of the Mother Road.

Tulsa businessman Cyrus Avery’s key role in not only creating the highway, but ensuring that it swung south and came through Tulsa helped cement the city’s claim.

“If you look at a map and you draw a line between Chicago and Los Angeles, it doesn’t go anywhere near Oklahoma,” Martin pointed out Monday. “And in addition to, you know, a southern route being a little less susceptible to snow and ice during the winter, Cyrus Avery was very influential in the fact that he said ‘you know, there’s this brand new bridge, you know, across the Arkansas River in Tulsa that’s the safest way to cross that river.’ Of course, that’s the 11th Street Bridge which is still standing there, next to a plaza that bears Cyrus Avery’s name.”

Moreover, Avery went on to make that highway top of mind for Americans during the early and explosive growth of travel by automobiles.

“The next year, 1927, he helped found the U. S. 66 Highway Association, which that group - founded here in Tulsa - was the main arm to market the road as the best road to go west, and helped encourage all these towns to get it paved as soon as possible. That’s why it became the main road west during the Dust Bowl, that’s why it was so important to World War Two efforts to mobilize troops and get goods where they needed to go. And when the war was over, everyone took it to go see the Grand Canyon, and it just became this legendary road over time, and all of that’s because they really started laying those pieces down real early on in the road’s history.”

The official centennial anniversary of Route 66 will be November 11th, 2026.