History of Route 66
"If you ever plan to motor west Travel my way, take the highway that's the best, Get your kicks on Route 66!It winds from Chicago to L. A. More than two thousand miles all the way. Get your kicks on Route 66!
Now you go through St. Looey, Joplin, Missouri And Oklahoma City looks mighty pretty. You'll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico Flagstaff, Arizona; don't forget Winona, Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino.
Won't you get hip to this timely tip When you make that California trip. Get your kicks on Route 66."
Words & Music by Bobby Troup Copyright 1946, Londontown Music
The only road with a Pulitzer Prize to it's credit.
Travelers along Route 66 who are questioned about the "why" of their journey usually say something
along the lines of: "People are tired of fast food, fast times. The effort and feeling that people had gave
a heart and soul to old 66. People are starting to realize that again."
Travel on the mythic highway of John Steinbeck, of Doorthea Lange's stark Dust Bowl photographs,
and of the television buddies, Martin Milner and George Maharis, has been steadily increasing, fueled
most notably by Europeans, some on vintage motorcycles, in hot pursuit of the "real" America.
It is no longer possible to drive the route uninterrupted. But Tom Snyder, founder of the Route 66
Association(1), says that this year, 20,000 die-hards will travel most of the roughly 2,400 mile route,
through eight states from Chicago to Santa Monica.
Those visitors represent an estimated $20,000,000 in revenue for the gas stations, motor courts, eateries
and other businesses along the route. That's up from $10,000 in 1984.
Route 66 was con-ceived in the 1920's by Cyrus Stevens Avery of Tulsa,
Oklahoma as an effort by local boosters to link the former Indian Territory with
Chicago and Los Angeles. Avery, a highway commissioner, envisioned diverting
traffic from Kansas City and Denver when he was asked by the U.S. Bureau of
Public Roads to help develop a new system of interstate highways. Avery spent
most of 1925 working with an appointed committee to stitch together hundreds of
existing roads into the new system. Avery wanted U.S. 60 for his "road to
California" but bowed to political pressure in accepting the "66" designation on
November 11, 1926.
The road was later promoted through Phillips 66 gasoline, which appropriated the
magic numbers and logo, and by the United States Highway Association, based in Clinton, OK. Both
touted Route 66 as the Main Street of America.
Perhaps due to it's Oklahoma origins, Route 66 has become the state's single "most tourists" attraction. Tom Myers, the economic development director for the state tourism office estimates that the state's Route 66 tourists could spend more than $40,000,000 provided they can find the road. Jim Ross, of Ghost Town Press(2) says that about 80 percent of the original paved sections across the country are driveable, but
some are abandoned fragments leading nowhere. Improvements and bypasses to the road began almost
immediately after its completion in 1926 when engineers sought to straighten out its hooks, elbows and
hairpin turns. Navigating Route 66 can be baffling because the road contains many dead ends and
sections that have been taken over by city roads or the interstates.
Route 66 travelers have made a fetish out of tracing authentic pieces of the highway. They have been
aided in their quest by the dramatic resurgence of Historic Route 66 signs, complete with the legendary
shield, that began appearing in June of 1995 in all eight states. The signs resulted from persistent
lobbying by the statewide Route 66 Associations, which held car rallies, foot races, peanut brittle sales
and box suppers to raise money to supplement the states' investments.
The signs represent "democratized history," according to Michael Jackson, chief architect for the state
historic preservation office in Illinois where approximately 600 signs went up in the Summer of 1995.
Jackson said they were the result of a grass roots effort(3).
Route 66 is being viewed now as a means to infuse towns along the route with some of their lost
prosperity. Many smaller communities - particularly those in the "oil patch" - are trying to rebound
from the double whammy of being bypassed by the interstate highway system and from the oil bust.
Combined with the decline of the family farm and rural flight, these blows have resulted in population
losses approaching 10 percent in the decade between 1980 and 1990.
Like Route 66 itself, preservation efforts along the route have been patchy. But steadily, in towns along
the route a palpable rebirth has occurred by nursing what old timers are calling the memory route.
It begins in Grant Park on the shore of Lake Michigan in downtown Chicago, Illinois and ends at the
Santa Monica Pier in the Los Angeles Basin of California. Enroute it passed through eight states.
Illinois, Missouri, Kansas(4), Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
Route 66 was the first highway of such length to be paved from one end to the other. Earlier there were
long stretches of dirt, or planks floating on sand. The road brought the nation to California - twice.
Once in the 1930's and again after World War II.
Along the original road travelers drove along Main Street(s) of the USA at eye-level with pedestrians
instead of skirting towns on freeways.
But why this level of interest?
Stuart Kellogg, writing in the Victorville Daily Press said: "Because of the kitsch, of course. The snake
farms and curio stands, the 40's motel cabins and 50's burger shacks, the [places] `cooled by
refrigeration.'
"And everywhere, the gas stations -- some squat as chapels, others exuberant as Chartres."
The freeway system put the nail in the coffin of Route 66: the mom-and-pop motels, the hamburger stands, Americana. Now interested parties - headed mainly by dedicated volunteers in the small towns along the route who recognize the value of Route 66 preservation - are pulling together to maintain much of the magic of the route.
1. Route 66 Association, Oxnard, CA is one of two national, eight state and ten international groups devoted to preserving Route 66.
2. Ghost Town Press in Bethany, Oklahoma, publishes an eight map set of Route 66 . . . one fold out map for each of the eight states. 817-488-4940
3. The Motorcycle Division of the Illinois Route 66 Association was a key element in the signage program. Participants in the 1995 inaugural run of The Mother Road Ride/Rally© were honored guests when the Illinois Association paraded from downtown Chicago southward down the original Route 66 alignment. In 1996, that Association's annual tour will be in southern Illinois running toward Chicago. The Mother Road Ride/Rally© looks forward to 1997 when it can again join their caravan of vintage motorcycles and automobiles.
4. The few miles the road covered in Kansas were bypassed when the Interstate Highway system was created.