On January 29, 1886, Carl Benz applied for a patent for his “vehicle powered by a gas engine.” The patent – number 37435 – may be regarded as the birth certificate of the automobile. (Daimler)
In 1903, Henry Ford officially opened the Ford Motor Company and five years later released the first Model T. In 1907, Henry Ford announced his goal for the Ford Motor Company: to create “a motor car for the great multitude.” (pbs)
“[T]he automobile constituted a personalized urban mass transit system, allowing the owner to travel whenever or wherever he desired.” (Davies, NPS)
Moreover, it provided a personal means of escape from the congestion of metropolitan America and reduced cross-country travel from an adventure of the affluent and stouthearted to a relatively inexpensive and common occurrence. (NPS)
Into the 1920s named trails were the way to navigate around the country. The trails were a product of the pioneer days of auto travel when government took little interest in interstate roads. Named trail associations had served an important purpose in the 1910s when many States lacked a highway department or had an ineffective one. (Weingroff)
Long trips often meant using a variety of different roadways, each one with its own standard for road quality and signage. Typically referred to as “trails” and run by “trail associations,” boosters would stitch together these routes with already existing roads (of varied quality), give it a name (like “Dixie Highway” or “Lincoln Highway”), and promote it.
Businesses along these routes typically paid dues to the trail associations, which meant routes weren’t always laid out to give drivers the quickest route, but instead to collect the most dues. There were over 250 such routes established by the mid-1920s. (Bloomberg)
With the growing number of vehicles on the roads, the associations helped focus attention on their condition, identified interstate roads for use of motorists, and sought increased funding for good roads projects.
However, by the early 1920s, State and Federal highway officials realized that the named trail associations had outlived their usefulness. (FHWA) In 1925, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHO) asked the Secretary of Agriculture to work with states to replace all trail names with a unified highway numbering system.
On November 11, 1926, the newly established United States Numbered Highway System changed the way U.S. drivers navigate the country. For the most part, north-south routes got odd numbers (numbers ending in 1 or 5 for principal routes), and east-west routes even numbers (multiples of 10 for principal routes).
Officially, the Chicago-to-Los Angeles route received the numerical designation of Route 66. That designation acknowledged the route as one of the nation’s principal east-west arteries. Mostly, U.S. 66 was just an assignment of a number to an already existing network of State-managed roads, most of which were in poor condition.
US Route 66 or US Highway 66 (US 66 or Route 66) is made up of several existing auto trails and regional roads, most notably the National Old Trails Road (or Ocean-to-Ocean Highway). Other key contributing trails included the Ozark Trail System in Missouri/Kansas and the Lone Star Route.
The 2,448-mile highway runs from-to Chicago (at Grant Park at the intersection of Jackson and Michigan Avenues) to Santa Monica (near the Santa Monica Pier at the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Ocean Avenue).
It didn’t receive signs until 1927 and wasn’t completely paved until 1938. The highway passes through Illinois. Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
Its diagonal course linked hundreds of rural communities from Chicago to Kansas and on to Los Angeles, enabling farmers to transport grain and produce. By the 1930s the trucking industry was using Route 66. The truckers enjoyed the easier drive across the prairie lands and milder climates than the northern routes offered. (FHWA)
To further the popularity of Route 66, John Steinbeck proclaimed Route 66 the Mother Road in his 1939 book The Grapes of Wrath. (FHWA) “Highway 66 is the main migrant road, 66 – the long concrete path across the country …”
“… waving gently up and down on the map, from the Mississippi to Bakersfield – over the red lands and the gray lands, twisting up into the mountains, crossing the Divide and down into the bright and terrible desert, and across the desert to the mountains again, and into the rich California valleys …” (Steinbeck)
“… 66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder, of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert’s slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there.”
“From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight….” (Steinbeck)
“The people in flight streamed out on 66, sometimes a single car, sometimes a little caravan. All day they rolled slowly
along the road, and at night they stopped near water.”
“In the day ancient leaky radiators sent up columns of steam, loose connecting rods hammered and pounded. And the men driving the trucks and the overloaded cars listened apprehensively. How far between towns? It is a terror between towns.” (Steinbeck)
“Merchants in small and large towns along the highway looked to Route 66 as an opportunity for attracting new revenue to their often rural and isolated communities. As the highway became busier, the roadbed received improvements, and the infrastructure of support businesses — especially those offering fuel, lodging, and food that lined its right of way — expanded.”
“Even with tough times, the Depression that worked its baleful consequences on the nation produced an ironic effect along Route 66. The vast migration of destitute people fleeing their former homes actually increased traffic along the highway, providing commercial opportunities to a multitude of low capital, mom-and-pop businesses.” (NPS)
“The romance of Route 66 was created, in part, by marketing the Hollywood version of American Indians. Travelers were given the stereotypical images they were accustomed to seeing in films to lure them into [Trading Posts and] buying postcards and souvenirs, taking photos with wooden Indians, staying the night in a “wigwam” and spending a little extra time and money on their journey west.” (American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association)
“In 1956, President Eisenhower, who had witnessed the military advantages of the German Autobahn during World War II, supported the passage of a law to construct a new system of high-speed, limited-access, four-lane divided highways – today’s interstates.”
“Five new interstates (I-55, I-44, I-40, I-15, and I-10) incrementally replaced US 66 over the next three decades. Interstate construction coincided with the powerful forces of economic consolidation as evidenced by the growth of branded gasoline stations, motels, and restaurant chains.”
“The 1984 bypassing of the last section of U.S. 66 by I-40 led to the official decommissioning of the highway in 1985, impacting countless businesses and communities along the road.” (NPS)
The National Trust for Historic Places listed Route 66 on their America’s Most Endangered List and designated the road a National Treasure.
Leave your comment here: