Discovery: Route 66 postmarkart

I was going through photos of some past road trips and found this piece at the Route 66 Museum in Kingman, Arizona.  We were there in November 2021, and there was a poster collage on the wall showing 250 postmarks from all along Route 66 and nearby landmarks.  The collector even got a postmark from Cadiz, CA on the last day of issue (29 Dec 1995), and the postmark for the 100th Anniversary of Supai AZ, the town at the bottom of the Grand Canyon where the mail can only be delivered by mule.

The poster was accompanied by a lengthy news story.  The postmark art was created by Ken Turmel, a former postal worker who spent years and drove thousands of miles to gather all the postmarks shown.  The print was 2 feet by 3 feet in size and was available for sale.  Bill Clinton is said to own a copy, along with Reba McEntire and Moody Blues members Justin Hayward and Mike Pinder.

Looking at it now, I wish I had taken the time to get better photos.  But I'm not here to steal the artist's work, just share it with the world.  You can probably still see it at the museum ... and the artist went on to do some others after the Route 66 collage shown here.  I have removed the link to the site, as explained below.  The site has photo galleries, his bio, and a lot more news articles.

At the time I wrote this you could get "Route 66 and More" and other prints on the artist's web page.  

I wanted one for my upcoming birthday, for the big blank wall behind my gaming computer. 

June 7 update: We tried to order one, got no response, and finally got a Paypal refund.  I wish I had followed a few more links while researching him.  It turns out that the artist died at the start of 2026.  There are many pages available with nice tributes to him.


 

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