More than 1,000 Mustangs depart Lubbock for Route 66 drive - KCBD

The Lubbock Mustang Car Club organized the run, with 1,215 cars making the trip northwest to Adrian, the official midpoint of Route 66. Drivers covered 345 miles in a single day, stopping at Cadillac Ranch and Buc-ee's before grabbing a bite at the Midpoint Cafe.

The timing isn't random. Route 66 turns 100 years old on November 11. The highway once ran from Chicago through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona all the way to Santa Monica, and it still pulls car clubs and road trip diehards from all over the country. Lubbock's club chose to mark the centennial by driving a piece of that history themselves rather than just talking about it.

For neighbors here, it's a reminder of how deep the car culture runs in this part of Texas. A club big enough to send over a thousand vehicles on a single organized drive says something about how many people in Lubbock and the surrounding Panhandle plains still build their weekends around classic Mustangs and long stretches of open highway. Adrian sits exactly halfway between Chicago and Santa Monica, meaning the Lubbock crew picked the literal center of American road trip history for their centennial send off.