Monrovia's Route 66 Parties Are Over. The Aztec Hotel's New Noodle Bar Is Still Open.

Wednesday, November 11, marks 100 years since Route 66 was inaugurated through Monrovia. The town has already held its celebrations, so how do you mark the date?

The City of Monrovia gives the date the "Mother Road" was inaugurated through town as November 11, 1926. The Monrovia Historical Museum dates an earlier milestone, the highway's designation on April 30, 1926, which put that 100th anniversary on April 30, 2026. Monrovia's events clustered around the spring date and wrapped up in October. What's left for the November anniversary is the road itself, and right now you can see more of it than you could a year ago. The biggest change is at Foothill and Magnolia. The Aztec Hotel has been closed to guests since 2012, but people are ordering Chengdu-style noodles and cocktails inside it again.

Monrovia Held Its Centennial Events Early

Monrovia spread its centennial across the year. The Route 66 "Get Your Kicks" community celebration on May 3 had vintage cars, music, food, a Route 66 passport station and a new museum exhibit. In October the City named its last centennial weekend. On October 16, the Monrovia Historical Society premiered The History of Monrovia's Route 66 in the Community Center's Kay Dalton Room, and the Street Rods Forever car show followed on October 17.

KGEM produced the 50-minute film with the Historical Society. Colorado Boulevard's preview of the premiere says it covers the Route 66 alignments through town, the roadside businesses, the Aztec, the McDonald brothers' food stands and the Monrovia Flying Field. If you missed it, the Monrovia Historical Museum's video page has a different KGEM program, "Celebrating 100 Years of Route 66," on YouTube.

So November 11 falls after the celebrations ended. The Route 66 Centennial calendar shows no Los Angeles County event on or near that date. Its nearest California event is in Needles on November 7. The City's holiday calendar also lists a Veterans Day ceremony for November 11, so the date has its own meaning in town. If you want to mark the November anniversary, plan your own route.

A Noodle Bar Is Open Inside the Aztec

The Aztec Hotel at 311 W. Foothill Blvd. opened in 1925. It's a 44-room Mayan Revival building that became one of the best-known stops on early Route 66. GoRoute66 reported on July 13, 2026 that the hotel had been closed since 2012, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and was on the market for $15 million.

About two weeks after that report, the Monrovia Chamber of Commerce held a lunch event on July 29 at a new business in the building, Mayan Bar & Noodle. On August 11 the Chamber followed up with a ribbon cutting and tea ceremony at 317 W. Foothill. Mayan Bar & Noodle describes itself as "located inside the historic Aztec Hotel." The menu is built on Szechuan flavors, with noodle bowls, shareable appetizers, beer, wine, cocktails and other handcrafted drinks. The site lists hours of 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. and says it is closed on Tuesdays.

The restaurant shouldn't be confused with a reopened hotel. The guest rooms were still reported closed and the property was still for sale as of that July report. What has changed is that you can get a table inside one of Route 66's most unusual surviving buildings on a weeknight. The National Park Service's entry on the Aztec describes a complex that includes the Mayan Room restaurant and banquet facilities, and the new tenant took a name with the same history. This year November 11 falls on a Wednesday, which is a regular open day for the noodle bar. That makes it the easiest place in Monrovia to sit down on the road that day.

The Aztec's location also explains why the rest of the route is spread out the way it is. The hotel faces Foothill because the 1926 highway did. GoRoute66 and the NPS both say the 1931 realignment moved traffic onto a different street. The Monrovia Historical Museum's own posts put that shift in the early 1930s, and one dates it by 1934. Either way, the Aztec was left on a road that was no longer the highway.

The 1926 Route, From Huntington to Foothill

The Monrovia Historical Museum's history of the route traces the early alignment. It came into town on Huntington Drive, turned north on Shamrock Avenue, then headed west on Foothill Boulevard toward Arcadia, Pasadena and Los Angeles. A later alignment stayed on Huntington. That gives you an L-shaped route you can cover in an afternoon. The Aztec is the last stop.

1. The McDonald brothers' Airdrome site, 742 E. Huntington Dr. LA Car's "100 Years of Route 66 in Monrovia" reports that before they moved to San Bernardino, the McDonald brothers sold hot dogs and orange juice at a stand here. Nothing of the stand is left to visit, but the address puts one of the best-known roadside food stories on Monrovia's stretch of Huntington.
2. The Oak Park Motel sign, Huntington Drive. The museum describes the motel's Googie-style sign as a local Route 66 landmark. You can see it from the street.
3. The Route 66 mural at 1111 Encino Ave. The Greetings Tour mural by Victor Ving covers the Chick-fil-A wall behind Huntington Drive, facing Satoru Tsuneishi Park. It shows the changing San Gabriel Valley alignment with Monrovia's Route 66 shield and a Flying A gas station. That station once stood in Monrovia and no longer exists, so the mural is the only place to see it now. The mural was finished in 2025. The City held a ribbon cutting for the park at the same address on January 13, 2026.
4. Fred's Monrovia, Shamrock Avenue. Fred's has an automobile museum and a mock 1950s soda shop, and it was part of the May 3 centennial open-house program. On a normal day it's an event-rental venue with no published public hours, so plan to see it from the street.
5. The Aztec Hotel, Foothill and Magnolia. The turn west onto Foothill brings you to the carved facade at 311 W. Foothill and to dinner at Mayan Bar & Noodle.

Going in this order follows the 1926 traffic. It also leaves the one stop with a menu and late hours for the end.

The Museum Exhibit Runs Through December 31

The other place where the centennial is still running is the Monrovia Historical Museum at 742 E. Lemon Ave. Its exhibit, "Route 66: A Road Through Time," opened in late April. The Route 66 Centennial calendar lists December 31, 2026 as its end date. The museum's website lists hours of Thursdays and Sundays, 1 to 4 p.m. Admission is free, and donations are accepted.

Those six hours a week are the main thing to plan around, because the museum is closed on November 11. Here's how the centennial dates line up:

• Saturday, November 7: The Route 66: The Main Street of America Roadshow screens at the Los Angeles Theater, the nearest in-person centennial event.
• Sunday, November 8, 1 to 4 p.m.: The museum is open the weekend before the anniversary.
• Wednesday, November 11: The 100th anniversary of the inauguration through Monrovia. The museum is closed. Mayan Bar & Noodle keeps its regular hours. At 5 p.m. Pacific, the Society for Commercial Archeology hosts "The Afterlife of Route 66," a free Zoom talk listed on the national centennial calendar.
• Thursday, November 12, 1 to 4 p.m.: The museum reopens the day after the anniversary.
• Through Thursday, December 31: The exhibit's last scheduled weeks. That leaves nine more Thursday and Sunday openings in December.

One possible plan: see the exhibit on Sunday the 8th, drive the route on the 11th, and end with dinner on Foothill. All three stops are in town, and two of them didn't exist on this stretch of road a year and a half ago. For more of what's going on around town, our Monrovia neighborhood page and our recent post on the canyon reopening and Old Town's restaurant turnover cover the rest of the weekend.

The Mark & Al Team has worked in the San Gabriel Valley for more than 35 years, through several changes on Foothill and Huntington. If you own a home along Monrovia's old Route 66 streets and wonder how this year's activity on the corridor affects its value, request a free home valuation or consultation. We'll talk it through, one neighbor to another.