Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza

Cyrus Stevens Avery was born in Pennsylvania in 1871, moved to Oklahoma with his family in 1881, and built a career in Tulsa during the city's oil-boom years as a real estate developer, hotel operator, and oil-business broker. By the early 1920s he had become a leading voice in Oklahoma's good-roads movement — a national political coalition pushing for federal investment in paved highways at a time when most American roads outside major cities were still dirt.

In 1924 the federal government appointed Avery to the Joint Board on Interstate Highways, a panel charged with laying out the first standardized national highway system. The board's work in 1925 produced the numbered U.S. highway system (US-1 through US-99) that replaced the previous tangle of named auto trails (Lincoln Highway, Dixie Highway, etc). Avery's specific responsibility was the southern transcontinental highway, which the board originally proposed to route from Chicago through St. Louis, then southwest through Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and into Los Angeles.

Avery successfully argued that the highway should instead bend through Oklahoma — passing through Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Amarillo — for two reasons. First, the engineering: the proposed Arkansas/Texas route crossed difficult terrain that would be expensive to pave. Second, Avery argued the Oklahoma route would better serve the agricultural and oil economies of the southern plains. The board accepted his argument; the resulting highway was originally numbered US-60 but became US-66 in the final 1926 designation. Avery would spend the rest of his life as Route 66's most active promoter.

The East Meets West bronze sculpture is the visual centerpiece of the plaza. Sculptor Robert Summers — a Texas artist known for monumental bronzes — created the work specifically for the Avery Plaza in 2012. The sculpture depicts a 1920s-era Model T automobile carrying Cyrus Avery, his wife Essie, and their daughter, encountering a horse-drawn oil wagon on a Tulsa road. The two vehicles appear to be passing each other, with the horses startled by the automobile.

The composition is deliberately symbolic: the Model T represents the future of American transportation that Avery's highway commission was helping to enable; the horse-drawn wagon represents the immediate past that the automobile was rapidly displacing. The sculpture captures the precise moment in American history when these two transportation eras overlapped — roughly 1920 to 1935, when paved highways and reliable automobiles were spreading across the country but rural areas still depended heavily on animal-drawn transport.

The sculpture is full-scale (the Model T is approximately the size of an actual 1920s Model T) and stands at the center of an elevated plaza on the south side of the 11th Street Bridge. Interpretive panels around the sculpture provide context on Avery, the 1925 highway commission, the development of Route 66, and the broader American auto-highway story. The panels are accessible 24 hours a day and are written for non-specialist visitors.

The 11th Street Bridge over the Arkansas River was completed in 1916 — a decade before Route 66 was officially designated — as a major automotive bridge connecting east and west Tulsa. When the federal highway commission designated Route 66 in 1926, the bridge was incorporated into the official Route 66 alignment because it was already the primary Arkansas River crossing in Tulsa. The bridge carried Route 66 traffic continuously from 1926 through the 1950s when the highway began rerouting onto interstates.

Walking onto the bridge from the Avery Plaza, visitors can stand on actual original Route 66 pavement — historic concrete that was poured in the 1920s and has been preserved as a pedestrian-and-bicycle bridge since the early 2000s. The bridge has been formally rededicated as the Cyrus Avery Centennial Bridge and is the longest surviving stretch of original Route 66 pavement in the Tulsa city limits.

The bridge view itself is one of the better photography spots in Tulsa. Looking east from the plaza, downtown Tulsa rises about a mile away across the Arkansas River; looking west, the Route 66 alignment continues toward Sapulpa and the broader Oklahoma Mother Road corridor. At sunset and on clear nights the bridge lights illuminate, and the broad sky over the river catches the last light beautifully.

The plaza is open 24 hours a day, completely free, with no admission or staffed visitor center. Free parking is available in the small surface lot at the south entrance to the plaza on Southwest Boulevard. A larger overflow lot serves the adjacent Route 66 Historical Village (a separate visitor stop a mile west). Typical visits take 20 to 45 minutes — enough time to walk the plaza, photograph the East Meets West sculpture, read the interpretive panels, and walk onto the 11th Street Bridge for the Tulsa skyline view.

For photography, the best time is the hour before sunset (golden hour). The light angles work well for the East Meets West sculpture, the downtown Tulsa skyline catches the warm light across the river, and the 11th Street Bridge provides clean compositional lines. Morning light works too but lacks the sky drama. Nighttime visits — when the bridge lights illuminate — are dramatic but require slower exposures and a tripod for serious photography.

The plaza is accessible — paved walkways throughout, gentle grade changes, no stairs required. Service dogs are welcome; well-behaved pets on leash are permitted on the plaza and the bridge. There are no restrooms or food service on site; combine a plaza visit with the adjacent Route 66 Historical Village or with a downtown Tulsa Arts District stop for those amenities.

The Avery Plaza is the natural first or last stop on any Tulsa Route 66 driving day. For east-to-west drivers heading toward Sapulpa and Oklahoma City, the plaza is the western departure point for the Mother Road. For west-to-east drivers arriving from Sapulpa, the plaza is the welcoming entrance to Tulsa Route 66. Either way, plan it as either the first photo stop or the last sunset stop on your Tulsa visit.

The Tulsa Route 66 Historical Village is one mile west on Southwest Boulevard — a free open-air visitor stop with a 194-foot oil derrick, a vintage 1917 Frisco steam locomotive, and Route 66 interpretive signage. The two stops naturally pair into a 60-to-90-minute Route 66 history experience along the west-Tulsa Mother Road corridor.

For visitors continuing into downtown Tulsa, the natural drive is east across the 11th Street Bridge into the historic Route 66 alignment that runs through the Blue Dome District and the Tulsa Arts District. That alignment connects directly to Cain's Ballroom, Greenwood Rising, the Mayo Hotel, and the Tulsa Club Hotel within a 10-minute drive. A full Tulsa Route 66 driving day naturally includes the Avery Plaza, downtown, the Golden Driller (15 minutes east), and dinner at Tally's Good Food or Mother Road Market.