Chelsea Oklahoma on Route 66

Chelsea is a small town with a population of under 2,000. It is worth a quick stop to walk down the main street and see the buildings. It is also home to what is claimed to be the first oil well in Oklahoma. (The first one was actually completed a couple of years earlier.) 

One thing that is very unusual is that there is a pedestrian underpass that goes underneath Route 66 right at downtown.  The low concrete wall behind the sign is protecting the stairs that lead to the tunnel.

Inside the well-lit tunnel there is a mural that runs the length of it with Rt-66 related scenes.

For a few blocks you have historic downtown Chelsea with buildings  (mostly brick ones) lining both sides of the street. the one directly in front is the museum which is in the restored Chelsea Bank building.

Under this sign for the Chelsea Inn and Cafe you can see the pink-painted front of Rolling Sweets Bakery, a popular breakfast spot. you can also see that after this building the road changes from blacktop to brick.

The building is gone, but this bit of tile floor survives.  A few of the buildings in downtown have been demolished, and this is a remnant of one of them.
 
I stopped to take some photos of this abandoned automobile repair shop named the "Carage". (The sign on the door says "Dr Bob's Auto Clinic".) A few minutes later the owner and his wife showed up on a golf cart. I'm not sure if they just happened to come by or they have some sort of monitoring system.  I spent several minutes talking to them and found out it had belonged to his father. He also told me that "American Pickers" a show on the History Channel came by one time to check it out. Unfortunately they came when he wasn't around.

The Chelsea Motel is a single building with six units in a row. The building isn't in great shape.  To the right of it is the neon sign for it, advertising that it is air conditioned.

Just past the Carage, and a bit further beyond Chelsea, the original alignment of U.S. Route 66 is not the current alignment.  Where this road goes over Pryor Creek there is a Modified Pratt Through Truss bridge that was built in 1926. You can still drive across this bridge, it is just a hundred or so yards off the current alignment of Rt-66.

 Prior stop: Around Vinita, Oklahoma. You can see all my Route 66 posts here. 

 

 

 

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