MindyPastrovich Message Matters Co.Driven by Story

Illinois, centennial year

The 2026 run
down the Mother Road.

Route 66 was certified on November 11, 1926. One hundred years on, the Illinois stretch is having its biggest season, and I am booked to shoot four of its events. My family ran one of the road's landmarks for eight years, so I know this piece of it by its side streets and its regulars, and not only by its anniversary.

Jump to the schedule All galleries (opens in a new tab)
ROUTE 66 CENTENNIAL YEAR 2026
The Driven by Story roadmap of the booked 2026 events, laid out in order along a two lane road with a portrait of Mindy Pastrovich at the top. The Powerlight Abe Lincoln Car Show at Cherry Hills Church on July 31 and August 1. The International Route 66 Mother Road Festival downtown on September 25 to 27. The Route 66 Conference and Epic Celebration at Motorhead's Bar and Grill on November 11. The Route 66 Film Festival at the Hoogland Center for the Arts on November 20 and 21.

The schedule

Where I will be standing.

Each entry links out to the organizer and, where the images are ready, straight to the gallery. Galleries for the events still to come go up within days of the last car leaving.

Full event galleries live on ShootProof, where you can search for your own car, download what you find and order prints.

Mother Road Festival gallery (opens in a new tab) Film Festival gallery (opens in a new tab)

We did not just photograph this road.

For eight years my family owned the Skyview Drive-In in Litchfield. Opened in 1950, on the original alignment, the last of the Route 66 drive-ins in Illinois still running, and an Illinois Route 66 Hall of Fame inductee since 1998.

I ran the schedule, did the marketing and built the events. In 2020, when the schools had nowhere to hold a commencement, we put graduations on the lot, ran senior parades through it, screened movies of the graduating classes, and filmed the school plays that could not be performed live that year. In October 2022 we brought a Guinness World Records adjudicator to Litchfield and set the record for the most dogs attending a film screening, 199 of them watching A Dog's Way Home against a previous mark of 120. That record was later broken in Los Angeles. It was set here first.

It matters on this page for one reason. When you hire me for a centennial event, you are hiring somebody who has run the gate, sold the tickets, moved the cars and watched what a Route 66 crowd actually does with a Saturday night.

Illinois Route 66 on the record (opens in a new tab) Route 66 News coverage (opens in a new tab) The longer version

Frames from those seasons are in the galleries

For organizers and sponsors

Coverage that sells next year.

A photographer who only documents the day leaves you with an archive. What an organizer needs by Monday is the shot that fills the sponsor deck, enough frames to post through the winter, and one image good enough to make somebody in Missouri decide to drive out next year.

That is the difference the strategy side makes. Before the event I want to know who you have to impress afterward, which sponsors need to see their name in frame, and what the promotional calendar looks like for next spring. Then I shoot to that list.

I have sat in the organizer chair as well. Eight years of scheduling and promoting a Route 66 landmark, including a Guinness World Records night that put a town of seven thousand people in the national press. I know which images an organizer needs in hand on Monday morning.

Centennial year coverage is being booked now, and multi day and season long partnerships get quoted by proposal.

Talk about the season Production rates
Festival goers with lanyards talking between screenings in a row of theater seats, shot from the balcony above them.

Where the work shows up first