New film celebrates the soul of Route 66
By Molly Ann Howell
Managing Editor
To celebrate Route 66’s 2026 centennial, a new feature documentary celebrating America’s most iconic highway is hitting the road and stopping in Gallup.
Filmmaker John Paget’s Route 66: The Main Street of America screens Oct. 8 at the El Morro Theatre as part of a multi-state «rolling premiere,” where Paget and crewmembers will visit Gallup. The cross-country tour kicked off Sept. 1 at the Art Institute of Chicago near the starting point of Route 66, and it will retrace the mother road’s legendary path to Los Angeles through the communities where its story originated.
Three years in the making, the two-hour film uses a classic Cadillac as its visual guide, weaving together the underdog stories of small towns, main streets, and mom-and-pop businesses fighting to survive in the shadow of interstates and corporate chains.
Paget’s relationship with Route 66 stretches back decades. His first Route 66 documentary was released in 1994 and featured Angel Delgadillo, a Seligman, Ariz., barber widely regarded as the father of the historic Route 66 preservation movement.
Seligman’s economy was dying when Delgadillo took it upon himself to campaign to have the
the former highway through his community recognized as historic. His efforts helped launch a movement that eventually spread across all eight Route 66 states.
Now 99, Delgadillo was the first person Paget interviewed for the new film.
Paget said what drew him to Route 66’s story was the story of the underdog, and all the small towns and main streets along the highway.
“What captured my imagination was all these main streets and small towns and their struggle and their fight to survive in an age where there’s interstate freeways and franchise chains,” he said. “How does the mom and pop diner survive when they’re off the interstate and competing against McDonald’s?”
Paget spent 2024 researching and scouting out the towns he wanted to feature in the new documentary. He spent most of 2025 filming the project, with it then taking about a year to edit.
Gallup’s portion of the documentary features the 103rd Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial.
Paget interviewed the 2025-2026 Ceremonial Queen Tewakeedah Martin, along with Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Association Director Kyle Tom and the director of the Gallup Cultural Center Terri Frazer.
He said his favorite part about creating the documentary was getting to talk to local people and being entrusted with their stories.
“That’s the greatest reward of doing the film, and it’s also the greatest reward of taking a trip down Route 66,” he said. “You get to really connect with people and hear their stories.”
Paget said his main focus of the project was to focus on the people who keep Route 66 alive, and welcome visitors to the area with open arms.
“Places survive because people choose to care about them, and Route 66 isn’t just a road of history, it’s a road of the future,” he said. “If there’s hope for America, Route 66 must survive.”
The documentary is recognized as an official project of the Route 66 Centennial Commission. It runs about two hours long, but Paget said people have told him it could’ve been longer, and he acknowledges that.
“The film really just scratches the surface of what’s out there,” he said. “You could do a whole hour on Gallup and not run out of stories.”
To buy tickets for the screening, visit https://www.mainstreetofamerica.com/screenings.
