It offered hope to those yearning to escape the Dust Bowl. It was heavily traversed by GI’s heading for training bases and embarkation points during World War II. At its peak in the post-war years, Route 66 or “America’s Mother Road,” was the primary conduit for vacationing families and autotourists in the Midwest and West. But the Interstate Highway Act of 1956 spelled the end of this symbol of popular culture. Travelers chose cement over sentiment, opting for the new, sleek, faster superhighways instead of the “highway of hope” as it was dubbed by the millions who used the route to launch a fresh start from the depression.
Route 66, however, is enjoying a rebirth in popularity. RVers can still get their kicks on 80 percent of the country’s first transcontinental highway. Some 66 years after U.S. Route 66 was opened, and 30 years after the New Mexico part of it was declassified, the dormant 2,400-mile road from the California coast to America’s heartland is enjoying a renaissance.
"Some 66 years after U.S. Route 66 was opened... the dormant 2,400-mile road from the California coast to America's heartland is enjoying a renaissance."
The rekindling of nostalgia is as virtual as it is real. Many websites are devoted to Route 66 lore and legend. The National Historic Route 66 Federation is one of at least 11 associations (see sidebar) that keep the memories alive through newsletters and special events.
Founded in 1994, the Federation claims to be the largest Route 66 group in the world with about 1,600 members. Its primary aim, like most of the other associations, is to save and preserve as much of the fabled highway as possible. Their involvement included fierce lobbying efforts with members of the US Senate that resulted in a National Route 66 Preservation Bill, signed into law by President Clinton. It is the largest preservation project of any kind in American history.
The Federation’s Adopt-A-Hundred program utilizes volunteers along the entire stretch of road to check for preservation problems and the group periodically presents the Steinbeck Award to Route 66 preservationists. Route 66 associations in the individual states transversed by the highway are active, too. The Kansas Route 66 Association, for example, helped finance the refurbishing of a bridge along the route and successfully lobbied local government for the rest of the funding.
Local festivals and special events in cities that dot the old route are held every year and lure thousands of devotees and curiosity seekers. San Bernadino, CA held the largest classic car show along the route in mid-September and on the second Saturday every June, motorcyclists launch an Annual Mother Road Ride/Rally that leaves Chicago bound for Santa Monica. What is viewed as the largest Route 66 event in history is planned for July 20-22, 2001 in Albuquerque to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Mother Road. In addition to a special PBS documentary to be aired nationwide during the week of the event, the city plans classic car parades, a roadside diner cook-off, a lecture series, a Route 66 film festival, a display of memorabilia, and more. City fathers expect more than 60,000 to participate in the festival.
"In the Grapes of Wrath, Steinback termed Route 66, 'the mother road, the road of flight...'"
A Route 66 internet guide reveals numerous colorful roadside attractions that still exist along the old route. There’s the Route 66 Diner in Sanders, AZ that boasts a 3/4-pound 66er burger, the National Route 66 Museum in Elk City, OK, and the Ariston Café in Litchfield, IL, which has been in business since 1924—two years before Route 66 was born. There are many more museums and diners plus numerous quaint motels and beds and breakfasts that beckon Route 66 disciples.
A road with possibly more lore and legend than any other in the world deserves some historical perspective. At the turn of the century a muddy pathway developed along the railroad tracks. Within 20 years private booster clubs linked together sections of road to form a ribbon from Chicago to the West and it was called the Old Trails National Highway.
In 1926 U.S. Highway 66 was designated and established to serve the ever-increasing highway traffic. Under the leadership of Cyrus Avery, a prominent impressario of road construction, it became the first completely paved highway linking Chicago and Los Angeles. Early automobile owners, who dubbed themselves “motor hobos” and “tin can tourists,” quickly discovered the novel thoroughfare. They saw the democratic freedom of the open road and the individual piloting of the automobile as the panacea to the class structured and regimented qualities of train travel. These pleasure motorists were quickly overwhelmed by the massive migrations of the 1930s, when hundreds of thousands of Okies fled the Dust Bowl along Route 66 to find work in California. In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck termed Route 66, “the mother road, the road of flight...” and with a little help from Hollywood, it was forever linked to the migrant Joads in the public imagination.
The war years brought a massive military presence onto Route 66 in the form of army convoys. Gasoline rationing severely limited any civilian or leisure traffic along the highway. After the war came the great boom time for the road. Swamping the previous numbers of the Dust Bowl, over 8 million people moved into the trans-Mississippi West after the war, 3.5 million to California alone. Most were G.I.s like Bobby Troup, looking for a place to settle down and start anew. It was while driving west to become a songwriter in L.A. that he penned the words to the song, “Get Your Kicks on Route 66.” Recorded by Nat King Cole, the song was not only heard, but reprinted in thousands of publications. The song title became etched in the country’s collective psyche and, along with a burgeoning car culture and later a TV show, propelled the highway into the national imagination.
"Route 66... was rediscovered as a symbol of an older, folksier, America where the people take the time to stop and talk to each other."
Where only the intrepid autocampers had gone before, thousands now came in droves to drive the famous road, now dubbed “The Main Street of America.” Women’s magazines offered tips on motoring with the family or how to pack for a “stationwagon summer.” Tourist shops, diners, cafes, and service stations, sprang up alongside of the road to serve this new mobile America.
The rise of an auto-culture on Route 66 mirrored previous roadside developments on the East and West Coasts. These highway transportation corridors had now reached the crisis stage. Route 1 from Boston to Washington, for example, was a continuous string of traffic lights, gas stations, diners, and body shops and regarded not only as inefficient, but also as a national eyesore. The early roads serving Los Angeles had already been clogged with traffic, making even the shortest driving experience miserable.
For a brief period of time, Route 66 offered the best of both worlds: a fully developed highway culture and a generally pleasurable driving experience. Even when Route 66 was booming, developments in Washington sowed the seeds of its eventual destruction. President Eisenhower, impressed by the efficient German autobahns he encountered during the war, and hearing the plaint of the overtaxed drivers of the East Coast for new roads, established a committee to develop a national highway program. The result was the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 which detailed the guidelines and provided the finds for a 42,500 mile national interstate highway system. The rise of the interstate was the coup de grace for Route 66.
Eventually, the new interstate system bypassed the boom towns on Route 66. With each bypass followed a dramatic loss of business and opportunity in the newly isolated towns, highlighting tensions of whom the road actually served, the interests of the local community or the interests of government and commerce. Many people saw the interstates as a symbol of government intrusion in the affairs of everyday life. Others saw them as the embodiment of a sterile, lifeless, and lonelier America. Unfortunately for history and nostalgia, many others found a new kind of communal experience upon the interstates, which they celebrated in large numbers.
The last main street—in Williams, AZ—of Route 66 was bypassed in 1985, but even before this time many of the great landmarks of Route 66—cafes, service stations, Burma Shave ads—had already been driven to extinction. Except for the townspeople who were bypassed, few people mourned the passing of old Route 66. Instead, the new interstates were seen as a boon to the nation’s economy and the epitome of American engineering might and perfection.
Numerous magazine accounts marveled at the cloverleaf exchanges and the elevated bridges, particularly around Los Angeles. That city soon became synonymous with graceful and modern highway structure and a mobile population. In the early years of the interstate, the new roads fulfilled much of their promise of smooth, efficient, safe, and hassle-free car travel. However as more and more cars flooded the American roads, it became clear that the new interstates could not handle the increasing burden. The gasoline crisis in 1972 effectively signaled the end of the brief era of popularity for interstate travel. With nostalgia for a simpler life spreading with every gridlock experience, state-based Route 66 organizations began to spring up, in hopes of preserving the old road. The “Route 66 Association” changed their name to the “Main Street of America Association,” and began to promote the small-town, back home feel of Route 66. The road was positioned at the antithesis of the impersonal, non-picturesque, sterilized, and dehumanizing interstates.
Route 66, decommissioned and almost defunct, was rediscovered as a continued on p. 47
route 66 symbol of an older, folksier, America where people take the time to stop and talk to each other. Old 66 towns began to preserve or repair sections of the old road in the hopes of reviving tourism. Not really a physical entity any longer, Route 66’s existing sections provide a handy refuge for those wanting to explore America’s past.
For more information about Route 66, contact The national Historic Route 66 Federation, PO Box 423, Tujunga, CA 91043-0423, or call (818) 352-7232.
Jim Bleyer has seven years experience as a journalist with the Orlando Sentinal and Tampa Tribune newspapers. He is currently a freelance writer based in Tampa, FL. |
|
