End of Route 66 Sign

The Route 66 Alliance is a nonprofit organization founded in 2007 dedicated to preserving, promoting, and celebrating Route 66 heritage along the highway's full length from Chicago to Santa Monica. The Alliance was formed by Route 66 preservation advocates from multiple states who wanted a unified national organization to complement the state-level Route 66 associations that had been operating independently since the highway's decommissioning in 1985.

One of the Alliance's first major initiatives was the formal installation of bookend signs at Route 66's symbolic eastern and western terminuses. The eastern 'Begin' sign in Chicago's Grant Park (at the intersection of Adams Street and Michigan Avenue) had been installed in earlier years; the matching western 'End of the Trail' sign at Santa Monica Pier was installed in November 2009 in a ceremony that included Route 66 dignitaries, local Santa Monica officials, and several Route 66 road-trippers who had completed the full route to coincide with the unveiling.

The 2009 installation was not a creation of new symbolism but a formal acknowledgment of what had already been the cultural reality for decades. The pier had functioned as the symbolic endpoint of Route 66 since at least the 1940s, when home-movie footage from road-trippers already showed celebrations at the pier rather than at the technical inland terminus at Olympic and Lincoln Boulevards. The Alliance's sign installation simply gave physical form to the existing cultural identity.

Photographing the sign is the primary reason most visitors approach this specific location, and the photography experience is genuinely a queueing exercise during peak hours. The sign sits on a relatively narrow piece of sidewalk at the pier's eastern entrance, and the framing that produces the iconic photograph — sign in foreground, pier and ocean in background — requires the photographer to stand at a specific spot looking west. During peak Route 66 tourism months (April through October) there is usually a small line of road-trippers each waiting for an unobstructed photograph.

Most travelers are good-natured about the line. The unwritten convention is that you photograph each other's groups — one party stands under the sign, hands a phone or camera to the next party in line, gets their photograph, then takes the next party's photograph in exchange. The system works surprisingly well and produces a rotating informal community of road-trippers each marking their trip's completion.

Best photography times are early morning (before 9am, when the eastern sun lights the sign's face and the pier is in shadow), late afternoon golden hour (when the western sun lights the pier and creates dramatic backlit silhouettes), and sunset (when the entire scene is bathed in orange-pink light and the Pacific horizon glows). The single most-iconic frame is probably the sunset photograph with the sign in the foreground and the sun setting over the Pacific behind the pier. Cloudy days produce flatter but more even lighting that works for documentary photography of the sign's details.

A common question among Route 66 enthusiasts is whether the pier sign represents the 'real' end of Route 66 or whether the true terminus is at the inland intersection of Olympic Boulevard and Lincoln Boulevard several blocks east. The answer is technical: Olympic and Lincoln was the official AASHTO-designated western terminus from 1936 (when Route 66 was extended west from downtown Los Angeles) through 1985 (when the highway was officially decommissioned). The pier was never the official endpoint.

But the symbolic reality is different. Generations of Route 66 travelers ignored the inland technical terminus and drove the additional mile west to the ocean. The pier was the natural finish line — the visible, tangible endpoint where the highway truly ran out of land. By the time the official designation was decommissioned in 1985, the cultural identity of the pier as the western terminus was so well established that the 2009 sign installation simply formalized what travelers had treated as the endpoint for decades.

For practical Route 66 trip-planning purposes, the sign at the pier is the endpoint that matters. Visiting the inland Olympic and Lincoln intersection is an interesting historical detour — there is a small commemorative marker at the intersection — but the photograph that ends the trip happens at the pier sign. The technical-vs-symbolic distinction is a footnote that mostly matters to highway historians rather than to road-trippers actually completing the route.

Route 66 ran 2,448 miles from Chicago's Grant Park to Santa Monica Pier across eight states — Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. The full drive typically takes road-trippers two to three weeks at a comfortable pace, longer if travelers stop at every notable Route 66 attraction along the way. Completing the full drive is a significant undertaking — the route passes through urban Chicago, prairie Midwest, Texas Panhandle high plains, New Mexico desert, Arizona high country, the Mojave Desert, and finally the Southern California coastal plain — and reaching the sign at Santa Monica is the moment when the entire effort culminates in a single photograph.

For travelers driving from Chicago, the pier sign is the symbolic exclamation point. The cultural mythology of Route 66 — the migration of Dust Bowl Okies described in Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath,' the post-war family vacation tradition, the kitsch-and-neon roadside attractions, the gradual decline as the Interstate system superseded the route — all converges at this final marker. Many road-trippers describe reaching the sign as genuinely emotional, particularly travelers who have made the trip in honor of a deceased family member or to mark a significant life transition.

For travelers driving from Santa Monica eastward to Chicago (the less common but increasingly popular reverse direction), the sign is the trip's starting point rather than its endpoint. Both directions produce equally valid Route 66 experiences. The Alliance's matching 'Begin' sign in Chicago and 'End of the Trail' sign in Santa Monica serve as paired bookends regardless of which direction a traveler is moving.

Most Route 66 road-trippers spend additional time at the pier and in Santa Monica after the obligatory sign photograph. The pier itself — Pacific Park, the 1922 Looff Hippodrome carousel, the pier-end fishing area, the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium beneath the boardwalk — provides 2-3 hours of additional exploration. The Third Street Promenade two blocks east offers lunch, shopping, and people-watching. Santa Monica State Beach extends north and south for several miles of broad sandy beach.

For travelers completing a longer trip, an overnight stay at one of Santa Monica's beachfront luxury hotels is the standard end-of-trip celebration. Shutters on the Beach and Hotel Casa del Mar (operated by the same parent company) sit directly on the beach a few blocks south of the pier and offer Pacific-facing rooms in the $700-$1,200 per night range. The Fairmont Miramar Hotel sits on Wilshire Boulevard a few blocks inland and offers similar luxury at slightly lower prices.

For dinner, the Santa Monica restaurant scene is genuinely strong. Chez Jay — the historic dive bar restaurant on Ocean Avenue a few blocks south of the pier — has been serving steak, lobster, and stiff drinks since 1959 and is the local Route 66 endpoint dining tradition. More upscale options include the FIG restaurant at the Fairmont Miramar, Coast at Shutters on the Beach, and the Ivy at the Shore on Ocean Avenue. The combination of a celebratory dinner, a beachfront hotel stay, and the next-morning return to the pier for additional sunrise photographs produces the canonical Route 66 endpoint celebration.