Route 66

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Alternate meanings: New Jersey State Highway 66, Interstate 66

U.S. Highway 66 or Route 66 was and is the most famous road in the U.S. Highway system and quite possibly the most famous and storied highway in the world. US 66 originally ran from Chicago, Illinois through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California before ending at the beach at Santa Monica for a total distance of 2,448 miles (3,940 km). When it first opened in 1926, it was one of the first national arteries, but only 800 miles were paved. Route 66 was not completely paved until 1938.

The route was not straight, but intentionally linked many small towns in the middle west. With its essentially flat course and favourable weather, the highway became popular with trucks, thus contributing to the growth of that industry.

The Federal Road Act of 1916, in which the U.S. government made funds available to states for new highways and promoted the interaction between the states and the federal government in choosing, building, and fixing roads and highways was the first attempt at a national highway system. By 1920, out of the three million miles of road across the continent, only 36,000 miles were auto-friendly.

In 1921, Congress enacted an even more comprehensive version of the act, the Federal Highway Act, which called for the construction of interconnected interstate highways. More significantly, this new Act ensured that unless states devoted seven percent of their roads as national highways, they would not receive any federal revenue. Cyrus Avery of Tulsa, Oklahoma was elected president of the Associated Highways Association of America. He was subsequently appointed as state highway commissioner of Oklahoma in 1923.

In 1924, another organization, the American Association of State Highway Officials, met in San Francisco. Avery, of course, was a significant player in this organization. As a result of the San Francisco meeting, the Secretary of Agriculture appointed a twenty-one member board to deliberate with the 48 state highway departments. Appointed by the Secretary as a "consulting highway specialist," Avery assumed the arduous task of creating the U.S. Highway System.

In 1925 that the government executed its plan for national highway construction and began paving. In 1926, when Route 66 first opened. Avery and John Woodruff of Springfield, Missouri created the National U.S. 66 Highway Association.

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Dispute about the designation for the highway

Before the national discussion on a national highway system began, major roads were named, for example "Dixie Highway" which ran from Michiga to Florida. The new interstate highways system would replace these names with a numbering system. Major east-west highways would have numbers ending in 0. Major north-south roads would have a designation ending with 1 for primary routes and 5 for secondary routes.

At first, the designation for the road that would become US Route 66 was going to be US 60. However, Kentucky believed that it was being discriminated against as its' "National Roosevelt Midland Trail " was not included in the national highway plan. Kentucky would have been the only Missippippi Valley state to not have a major east-west highway ending in 0. The original compromise called for designating the highway from Newport to Chicago and passed through Kentucky as US 60 and the road from Chicago to Los Angeles as Highway 62. However, Avery from Oklahoma and Piepmeyer from Missouri objected. After much debate and angry correspondence, Avery suggested Route 66 for the western highway.

After the end of the Second World War, US 66 became the road of choice for returning GIs, and later, their families during vacation season. This sharp rise in tourism in turn gave rise to a burgeoning trade in all manner of roadside attractions from teepee-shaped motels to frozen custard stands; Indian curio shops to reptile farms. It was changes like these to the landscape that further cemented 66's reputation as a near-perfect microcosm of the culture of America, now linked by automobile.

U.S. 66 was officially decommissioned in 1985 after it was decided the route was no longer relevant and had been replaced by the Interstate Highway System. Today, however, many Americans enjoy Route 66 nostalgia, and the road exists unofficially as an "historic route" in the states it once crossed on its journey from Chicago to Los Angeles. It has begun to return to maps in this form.

Through traffic following the path of US 66 now uses several Interstate Highways: I-10, I-15, I-40, I-44 and I-55.


Attractions on Route 66

  • One early promotion for the route, in 1928, was a long-distance foot race from Los Angeles to New York. The race was nicknamed the "Bunion Derby".
  • Billboards along the road were incredibly popular. Most notably "BurmaShave" signs which had catchy jingles.
  • Drivers on Route 66 prefered to stay in in a motel as opposed to a hotel and motel competition was fierce with many remarkable features constructed.
  • Also, many types of local attractions lured motorists to take a break from the road like Crystal City Amusement Park in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Route 66 in Literature

In 1940, California writer John Steinbeck referred to 66 as the "Mother Road" and "the road of flight" in The Grapes of Wrath, his seminal novel about the westward migration of Oklahoma's Dust Bowl farmers to California's San Joaquin Valley.

Route 66 in Music

In 1946, jazz composer and pianist Bobby Troup wrote his best-known song, "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66" after driving the highway himself to get to California. He presented it to Nat King Cole who in turn made it one of the biggest hit singles of his career. The title was suggested by Troup's first wife, Cynthia, who accompanied him on the trip.

The lyrics read as a sort of mini-travelogue about the major stops along the route, listing several cities and towns that Route 66 passes through. Specifically mentioned, in order, are St. Louis, Missouri; Joplin, Missouri; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Amarillo, Texas; Gallup, New Mexico; Flagstaff, Arizona; Winona, Arizona; Kingman, Arizona; Barstow, California; and San Bernardino, California.

Winona is the only town out of sequence in the list. It was a very small settlement east of Flagstaff, and might have been forgotten if not for the song's lyric, "Don't forget Winona" intended to rhyme with "Flagstaff, Arizona."

If you ever plan to motor west,
Travel my way,
Take the highway that is best --
Get your kicks on Route 66.
It winds from Chicago to LA,
More than two thousand miles all the way,
get your kicks on Route 66!
Now you go through St. Looey,
Joplin, Misoury,
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.

The song goes on to list many of the towns and cities along the highway:

Route 66 in Film

The highway also gave its name to a popular television show, Route 66, seen from October 4, 1960 through 1964 on CBS. The show featured Martin Milner and George Maharis as "Tod" and "Buzz," two young men in a Corvette looking for adventure along America's highways. Strangely, though much of the program was filmed on location, rarely was it shot along Route 66. The show's theme song, by Nelson Riddle, was also a hit. Riddle was commissioned to write the theme when CBS was informed that they could not obtain the rights to the Bobby Troup song. Even though the fully-orchestrated "Theme from Route 66" does not resemble the version by Nat King Cole and his jazz quartet, there is an unmistakable homage to the latter's piano solo throughout the number.


Replacement by Interstate Highways

File:Whiting bros .jpg
Abandoned, fire-damaged Whiting Brothers gas station, New Mexico. Conservation efforts are underway to preserve original buildings such as this all along the route.

The death knell for Route 66 came in 1956 with the signing of the Interstate Highway Act by President Dwight Eisenhower. As a five-star general fighting in the European theater during the war, Eisenhower was impressed by Germany's high-speed roadways, or "autobahns." Eisenhower envisioned a similar system of roads for the U.S. in which one could conceivably drive at high speed from one end of the country to the other without stopping as well as making it easier to mobilize troops in the event of a national emergency.

During its nearly sixty-year existence, Route 66 was under constant change. As highway engineering became more sophisticated, engineers were constantly looking for more direct routes between cities and towns. In fact, Kansas, with its roughly thirteen-mile-long (21 km) stretch of US 66 slicing off the southeast corner of the state near the Missouri and Oklahoma state lines, was totally bypassed by the late 1940s as part of a quicker, shorter route to Tulsa, Oklahoma. The stretch remains intact as Kansas State Highway 66.

One of the most notable reroutes came in 1953 when a new stretch of 66 more directly connected Kingman, Arizona to Needles, California on the Colorado River. The bypassed stretch through the Black Mountains of Arizona was fraught with sharp hairpin turns and was the steepest along the entire route; so much so that some early travelers, too frightened at the prospect of driving such a potentially dangerous road, hired locals to negotiate the winding grade. In some cases drivers were forced to back up the route, not only because reverse on most cars was more powerful than first gear, but also because some cars had no fuel pump and relied on gravity to feed fuel to the engine. The angle of the grade was steep enough to starve those types of cars of fuel.

Bypassed too was the small mining town of Oatman, Arizona, famous as the honeymoon stop of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard after their whirlwind wedding in Kingman on March 18, 1939. Oatman still clings to its Route 66 heritage more than half a century after being bypassed. Later, in 1984, Arizona would also see the final stretch of highway decommissioned with the completion of Interstate 40 through Williams. Official decertification of the highway by the federal government came the following year. Interstate 55, Interstate 44, Interstate 40, and Interstate 15 were built over the remains of US 66, as it did not seem so important that a highway from Chicago to L.A. have the same designation. Nevertheless, some highway historians want to put historic US 66 signs on US 66's former route.

A Missouri state park commemorating Route 66 was built on the former site of Times Beach, Missouri, which was a small town 17 miles southwest of St. Louis that resided alongside Route 66. The town was the site of a massive dioxin cleanup in the 1980s and 1990s.

Present-Day "Route 66"

When the highway was decommissioned, sections of the road were disposed of in various ways. Within many cities, the route became a "business loop" for the interstate. Some sections became state roads, local roads, private drives, or were abandoned completely. More than eighty percent of the original route and alternate alignments are still drivable with careful planning. Some stretches are quite well-preserved, including one between Baxter Springs, Kansas and Tulsa. The road through Oklahoma is relatively flat and straight, and it was on this part of 66 that two chemical engineers were testing a new gasoline from a Tulsa oil company in the late 1920s. The company car they were driving ran exceptionally well on the new blend, prompting the engineer in the passenger seat to exclaim that the car was "going like sixty." His companion looked at the speedometer and said that they were going more like sixty-six miles per hour (106 km/h). The combination of the highway number and the speed of the car led to the naming of Phillips 66 gasoline, a brand still marketed today.

File:Route66 sign.jpg
Modern-day sign in New Mexico, along a section of Route 66 named a National Scenic Byway

A roughly 160-mile-long (257 km) segment in Arizona signed as Arizona State Highway 66 links Seligman to Kingman and is considered to be Route 66's best-preserved stretch.

File:KingmanArizonaRoute66Tower.jpg
Towns such as Kingman, Arizona promote their association with Route 66

In California, where it is known by its pre-66 designation of National Trails Highway, travelers can drive a continuous stretch of approximately 150 miles (241 km) through the blazing Mojave Desert between Mountain Springs Summit west of Needles (where the Joad family camped out in The Grapes of Wrath after facing an armed posse at the state line) all the way to Victorville. Another surface street stretch between San Bernardino and Pasadena retains its number as California State Highway 66. In Pasadena, Route 66 was known as Colorado Boulevard, the street on which the Tournament of Roses Parade takes place every New Year's Day.

To approximate Route 66 via Interstate highways, take the following:

Route 66 -- The Revival

In 1990, Route 66 associations were founded separately in both Arizona and Missouri. Other groups in the other Route 66 states soon followed. The same year, the state of Missouri declared Route 66 in that state a "State Historic Route". The first "Historic Route 66" marker was erected on Kearney Street at Glenstone Avenue in Springfield, Missouri (now replaced, the original sign will be placed at Route 66 State Park near Eureka). Other historic markers now line - at times sporadically - the entire 2400-mile length of road. A section of the road in Arizona was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, and work is under way in Missouri to make the road a state scenic byway.

Cities and towns on US 66

Note: For an exhaustive list of all towns and cities on Route 66 see List of cities on U.S. Highway 66

Related U.S. routes

Related state routes

See also

External links


References

[[1]] U.S. Highways

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