Route 66 Historic District / Sixth Street

Route 66 was commissioned in 1926 and the route through Amarillo was finalized in the late 1920s. The road entered the city from the east via Amarillo Boulevard, threaded through the downtown commercial core, then turned south and west along what became the Sixth Avenue alignment through the San Jacinto neighborhood. The Sixth Street routing remained the official Route 66 alignment from 1926 through 1953, when the road was rerouted to bypass the residential neighborhood and run along Amarillo Boulevard.

During those nearly thirty years, Sixth Street was the commercial heart of Amarillo's Route 66 economy. Motor courts and tourist cabins lined the residential stretches; the commercial blocks between Georgia and Western were dense with cafes, filling stations, drugstores, theaters, dance halls, and tourist shops. The Nat Ballroom (originally a swimming pool, later a dance hall hosting Bob Wills and other Western Swing acts) was the social center; the GoldenLight Cafe (opened 1946) and dozens of other restaurants fed the traffic.

The rerouting of 66 to Amarillo Boulevard in 1953 began the decline, and the interstate-era abandonment of the Mother Road accelerated it through the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s Sixth Street was substantially neglected, with vacant storefronts outnumbering active businesses. The 1994 National Register listing, combined with the early-1990s broader Route 66 revival nationwide, set the stage for the gradual comeback the district has experienced since.

A good walking tour of the district begins at the eastern end near Georgia Street and works west toward Western Street, with parking available along the side streets or in the small lots scattered along the strip. The first several blocks contain a concentration of antique malls — the Nat (in the former dance hall), 6th Street Antique Mall, and a half-dozen smaller shops offering vintage furniture, Route 66 memorabilia, Texas collectibles, mid-century kitchenware, vinyl records, and the kind of well-curated regional antique inventory that rewards browsing.

The GoldenLight Cafe, around the middle of the strip, is the single most historically significant business in the district — Amarillo's oldest continuously operating restaurant on Route 66, open since 1946 in the same small storefront. The cafe is covered separately in this guide; even non-diners should walk past to see the vintage neon and the unchanged storefront. Nearby restaurants and bars include the GoldenLight Cantina (the cafe's sister bar with live music), Smokey Joe's barbecue, Tu Casita Mexican, and several other small operations.

The western end of the strip contains the more eclectic small businesses — vintage clothing, art galleries, a few specialty shops — and the district's western edge near Western Street transitions back into ordinary residential neighborhood. The full length of the strip is about a mile, walkable in twenty minutes one way without stops, but most visitors spend two or three hours browsing, eating, and drinking their way along the street.

Sixth Street hosts periodic district events that bring particularly large crowds — the annual Route 66 Festival (typically June, featuring car shows, live music, and a takeover of the entire strip), the Wildflower Run motorcycle event, and various smaller monthly happenings. Friday and Saturday evenings the bars and restaurants draw a lively local crowd from Amarillo and West Texas A&M students from nearby Canyon; weekday afternoons are quieter and better for serious antique browsing.

Most antique shops keep Tuesday-through-Saturday hours, generally 10am to 6pm, with many closed Sunday and Monday. Restaurants and bars run later and include some operations open seven days. Checking individual business hours before a visit is worthwhile; some of the smaller specialty shops keep limited or by-appointment hours that don't appear consistently online.

Combine a Sixth Street visit with the broader Amarillo Route 66 experience: a morning at Cadillac Ranch, an afternoon walking Sixth Street with lunch at the GoldenLight, dinner at the Big Texan, and an evening drink back at one of the Sixth Street bars makes for a satisfying full-day Mother Road experience in Amarillo. The district is also a worthwhile stop for travelers passing through with limited time — even a thirty-minute walk-through gives a genuine sense of mid-century Route 66 commercial life.