Route 66 Neon Park

Located in George M. Reed Roadside Park along Route 66, this array of vintage neon signs illuminates highway history. Once left to decay in piles of junk, the signs were lovingly restored to their mid-century modern charm and donated to the City of Saint Robert, where they are now displayed with story boards that detail their past locations and uses. 

From colorful hotel beacons to classic garage signs and the iconic Route 66 shield, the Neon Park is a treasure trove of roadside Americana. One sign, for the motel Stanley Cour Tel, has an especially unique claim to fame. Built in 1950 by Stanley and Olivia Williams, this St. Louis stopover gained notoriety for housing astronauts training for Project Mercury—the first U.S. manned space mission. 

The Neon Park is the first of its kind to be developed along the “Mother Road,” which stretches nearly 2,500 miles from Chicago, IL to Santa Monica, CA. All of the signs that now brighten the park originally sat along the Route between 1926 and 1985 and were obtained in working partnership with the Route 66 Association of Missouri and other donors.

As Missouri’s longest continuously open park along Route 66, George M. Reed Park has a rich history of its own, making it the perfect place for these signs to get a second life. The original concrete picnic tables from when the park opened in 1952 are still in place today, while an M-60 tank remains inside the park to showcase the Route’s role as a thoroughfare for transporting war material during WWII.