We’ve known for months that the annual International Route 66 Festival in 2012 would be hosted in Victorville, Calif.

In recent days, more details have emerged about the Aug. 9-12 event. A news release from the festival contained this:

The festival will feature a rally, a classic car show, daily entertainment, the Taste of 66, a car cruise to a drive-in theater, 66-themed vendors and other special events. Pre- and post-events are also being planned, including a poker run planned in the towns along California Route 66.

The historic Green Tree Inn in Victorville is the official site and host hotel, and will have special packages (limited availability) for our 66 travelers. Located on historic Route 66, the Green Tree incorporates a Route 66 theme and is a popular stop for travelers along the Mother Road. So join us at the festival and get your 2012 kicks on California Route 66!

The Festival is presented by California Historic Route 66 Association with the support of the California Route 66 Museum, the City of Victorville, the Route 66 Alliance, National Historic Route 66 Federation, and numerous financial sponsors.

Also, a placeholder website for the festival was launched here.

The Route 66 federation’s involvement in the festival is especially notable. Its director, David Knudson, took a hiatus from festival organizing several years ago after the health of his wife, Mary Lou, declined (she died in 2008). It’s good to see David back involved.

Something I wasn’t sure we’d see again … Harley and Annabelle Russell recently performing in their home base of Erick, Okla.

(Warning: the video contains Harley’s typically bawdy humor … another good sign, actually).

For those new to Route 66 News, Annabelle was diagnosed with ovarian cancer about a year ago. She endured major surgery and months of harrowing chemotherapy. Harley and Annabelle  suspended their decade-long act for Route 66 travelers at their Sandhills Curiosity Shop in Erick so he could care for her. The stress of Annabelle’s illness was hard on Harley, too — he lost a lot of weight.

Although she’s improved, she still has to undergo cancer treatments every 10 days or so. Harley and Annabelle still aren’t sure they can see any Route 66 tour groups this season.

But it’s still greatly encouraging to see Annabelle strumming a guitar behind her husband, just like old times.

Italian photographer Carlo Pinasco recently launched an application, “Image Route 66,” for iPads, iTouches, and iPhones that contains more than 200 high-resolution images from a Route 66 road trip he took in May. With it, you can take a virtual trip down the Mother Road.

But the most intriguing part of the app is each photograph is geo-referenced with global positioning. That way, if you’re interested in traveling to that Route 66 attraction, the app’s Google Maps plug-in will give you precise directions from your location if you’re connected to the Internet.

The turn-by-turn directions won’t always be on Route 66. And but with GPS coordinates, those directions almost certainly will be accurate.

The app requires an iOS operating system of 3.2 or higher. It contains a hefty 48 megabytes, so older iPhones or iPod Touches might crash more while using it.

“Image Route 66″ goes for 99 cents.

Here are a few screen shots of the app in operation:

Each photo also contains a link to a website about the Route 66 attraction. Pinasco seems to defer to the Legends of America site for this information.

The biggest drawback of the app is the omissions. More than 200 photos sounds like a lot. But Pinasco left off large chunks of Missouri and Oklahoma in the app, including POPS, Wagon Wheel Motel, Munger Moss Motel, Rock Cafe, and the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum.

So “Image Route 66″ might be good in a pinch during your road trip or planning your journey, but don’t be surprised if you find out later that you missed something really good if you rely on it alone.

For now, the best Route 66 app for the iPhone and iTouch remains Kelly Ludwig’s “Road Trip 66,” which costs more at $3.99, but it’s much, much more inclusive of the Mother Road’s attractions. And Ludwig tells me she’s developing an app for the iPad as well.

The owner of the Boot Hill Saloon & Grill in Vega, Texas, has put the restaurant up for sale. However, Boot Hill will continue operating until it finds a buyer.

Boot Hill chef and owner Rory Schepisi, known for her reality television roles in CMT’s “Popularity Contest” and “The Next Food Network Star,” has an asking price of $450,000 for the restaurant and tavern, which has operated for five years off Route 66 and is known for its creative twists on Texas cuisine.

Schepisi said in a telephone interview Tuesday that travel commitments — including a near-weekly gig with the Cadillac Culinary Challenge — has kept her from devoting as much time to Boot Hill as she’d like.

“I just can’t keep an eye on it like I should,” she said. “I hate that for my customers. It sucks.”

Schepisi added it’s difficult to find good restaurant management personnel in the small town of Vega (population 900).

“Boot Hill will be better for someone who can live in Vega full-time and operate it as a family-style restaurant,” she said. “It’s still a good business. With all of its world exposure to Route 66 travelers, it’s still doing well.”

Schepisi remains adamant about keeping the restaurant operating as usual in the meantime.

“I will keep it open if I don’t sell it,” she said.

Even if the restaurant sells, Schepisi says she’ll still live on a Vega-area on a ranch with her boyfriend Klay. She’s lived in Vega for eight years after moving from her native New Jersey.

Boot Hill is the second prominent Route 66 restaurant in the region to go on the block recently. The Midpoint Cafe in nearby Adrian, Texas, was put up for sale last summer. It hasn’t found a buyer.

Cage the Elephant, an up-and-coming rock band from Bowling Green, Ky., used a lot of footage from Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas, for this music video:

Here’s a good new video of one of the must-stops on Route 66 — Elmer Long’s Bottletree Ranch near Oro Grande, Calif.

There’s nothing quite like it in the world, much less the Mother Road.

The Nat Ballroom, a legendary former nightclub on Route 66 in Amarillo, Texas, will be converted into an antique mall that perhaps will eventually include a cafe and movie screen, reported the Amarillo Globe-News today.

The previous tenant’s lease ended in December after nine years. Kasey Robinson, a local business owner, promptly picked up the lease.

According to the newspaper:

Robinson, who owns Nest, with “green goods” of recycled fabric, organically grown cotton and silk and vegan bath and body goods at nearby 2900 S.W. Sixth Ave., has different plans. She wants to turn The Nat into a large antique mall with a museum of old photos of the place’s heyday at the entrance.

The rest of The Nat would be subleased booths to antique owners as well as to artists with paintings, jewelry and other new, used and handmade items. Eventually, she would like to have a small cafe and to use the large construction screen for a Friday night movie screening. [...]

“This is not just another antique mall,” Robinson said. “I plan to support 10 local artists as well. I had hoped to keep it quiet until we were doing the actual remodeling but as soon as one person found out, the emails started coming in, and my phone was ringing off the hook. It’s neat. A lot of locals in the city want to be a part of it.”

The Natatorium, as it is also called, started as a public swimming pool. The pool was covered in the 1930s, and The Nat was converted into a music venue. Acts that have performed there included Cab Calloway, Guy Lombardo, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, the Ink Spots, and Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys.

The Nat declined as a performing venue during the 1960s with the arrival of Interstate 40 and the Amarillo Civic Center. It sat vacant from 1982 to 1994, until it became an antique mall by day and a performance venue at night.

A recent photo of The Nat can be seen here.

(Hat tip: Bob “Crocodile” Lile)

It isn’t just Pontiac, Ill., seeing a big increase in Route 66 tourism in recent years. According to an article today in the Springfield State Journal-Register, the small town of Atlanta, Ill., is experiencing a surge, too.

From the newspaper:

In Atlanta, sales tax revenue jumped 43 percent last year during the peak tourism season of April to August compared to four years ago, before the opening of the Atlanta Museum and the reopening of the 1930s-era Palms Grill Cafe. Both buildings in the 100 block of S.W. Arch St. are owned by the Atlanta Public Library.

The two endeavors were Atlanta’s first efforts to generate revenue from the steady trickle of Route 66 travelers who drive through the town every summer. [...]

The increase in foot traffic led to the opening of two new businesses: the Route 66 Gift Shop, which sells memorabilia and vintage items, and the Arch Street Artisan Shop.

And Atlanta isn’t done in trying to attract tourism dollars:

This spring, Atlanta will begin preparing a walking trail and signage around a quarter-mile of the original Route 66 pavement north of town. Officials also plan to open a coal-mining exhibit next to the grain elevator museum.

The community also has purchased an 1891 residence that served as a rooming house for Route 66 travelers in the 1940s, before motels were readily available. The city plans to offer the same service to modern travelers, although the Atlanta Route 66 Rooming House isn’t expected to open until 2013.

Between Pontiac and Atlanta, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that a concerted Route 66 tourism effort between locals and city government will pay dividends.

The newspaper article also examines several other Illinois Route 66 towns, whose tourism efforts range from tentative to feeble. Save for a bicycle rack, Virden doesn’t seem to be doing much. But nearby Girard boasts Doc’s Soda Fountain, which displays a map showing all of its foreign Route 66 visitors and hires an additional waitress during tourism season.

Bill Deck said area schools and local groups book tours throughout the year. But out-of-towners traveling the Mother Road make up 40 percent of summer traffic. [...]

“There’s a growing awareness,” Ernst said. “The Europeans are looking for small communities to explore. We want to make them feel welcome to stop in Girard.”

It sounds like a cliche to say: “If you build it, they will come.” But when it comes to Route 66 travelers, that seems to be the case.

A few months ago, Dawn Welch, owner of the Rock Cafe on historic Route 66 in Stroud, Okla., said she’d been interviewed for a commercial spot by the Chickasaw Nation.

Here it is:

UPDATE: I forgot about this blog spot, in which Dawn talks about her Native American lineage.

(Hat tip: Kathy Anderson)

David Lamb of Smithsonian magazine has written an excellent article about Route 66′s abandonment by the U.S. highway system and the Mother Road’s eventual revival.

It’s in the February issue, but you can read it online here.

The article focuses on Arizona — Angel Delgadillo and the small Route 66 town of Seligman, La Posada in Winslow, Frontier Motel in Truxton, and a few other places.

The whole article is worth reading, but this excerpt about Alan Affeldt and the rejuvenation of La Posada is amazing:

After three years of negotiation, the Santa Fe Railway sold them La Posada for the price of the land, $158,000 for 20 acres. The hotel was thrown in free. The trio moved in on April Fool’s Day 1997, shooing away some hobos, and set to work. Seven months later, La Posada reopened with five meticulously restored guest rooms. The new owners operated in the red for five years; sometimes they met payroll with Affeldt’s credit cards. They scrambled for grants and put everything they made back into the project.

Now the 53-room hotel is booked to capacity virtually every night. Its Turquoise Room is regarded as one of the Southwest’s top restaurants. The grounds are landscaped with towering cottonwoods and hollyhocks. With a paid staff of 50, La Posada is the largest locally owned employer. Winslow has awakened from a 50-year slumber with a revived downtown, new shops, sidewalks and streets.

“Architecture is what brought us here,” Affeldt told me. “But what Route 66 gave us was a built-in audience—the people going up and down the road for whatever reason: architecture, history, nostalgia. Having 66 on our doorstep made all the difference.”

The thing is, Route 66 is still moving up. The revival hasn’t even plateaued.