GALENA ? Officials in this Cherokee County community of 3,300 hope nostalgia buffs will be willing to pay for genuine bricks that once were part of Route 66.

The city plans to sell 20 paving bricks that lined the famous American highway. If demand is strong enough there are another 1,000 in storage — and even more buried beneath the two miles of old highway that runs through town.

Interim City Manager Jim Ray said the bricks would be made available on the popular Internet auction site eBay, possibly by the end of the week.

“It’s a test run, and if it catches on, we’re going to be selling some more,” Ray said.

Ray, 77, estimates Galena has a potential supply of about 30,000 more bricks still buried beneath the road. Seven city blocks of Galena’s two-mile stretch of Route 66 are paved with bricks, which have long been covered by multiple layers of asphalt.

The highway first was dubbed U.S. Highway 66 in the summer of 1926, and its last link was decommissioned in 1984. The legendary roadway stretched 2,400 miles between Chicago and Los Angeles. A total of 13.6 miles of old Route 66 are in Kansas, between Galena and Baxter Springs on the Oklahoma line.

The city’s interest in selling the bricks coincides with Galena’s recent application for a $400,000 Kansas Department of Commerce matching grant for a downtown street beautification project. The first part of the street project would be to dig up those potentially valuable bricks.