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U.S. Route 66 or U.S. Highway 66 (US 66 or Route 66) was one of the original highways in the United States Numbered Highway System. It was established on November 11, 1926, with road signs erected the following year. [3]
Sep 9, 2024 · But in the mid-1950s, in the midst of its heyday, Route 66 suffered a major blow when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, creating the Interstate Highway...
- Elizabeth Yuko
May 3, 2023 · For decades, Route 66, known as the “Main Street of America,” was the major east-west route connecting Chicago and Los Angeles. Now stretching 2,400 miles, the highway has become a beloved...
- Overview
- Background and construction
- Rise and demise of the route
Route 66, one of the first national highways for motor vehicles in the United States and one that became an icon in American popular culture.
The system of major interstate routes—12 odd-numbered ones, running generally north-south, and 10 even-numbered ones, running generally east-west—was laid out in a proposal created by the American Association of State Highway Officials and accepted by the U.S. secretary of agriculture in November 1925. The route from Chicago to Los Angeles was designated U.S. Highway 60. Various states raised objections to this designation. For example, Kentucky protested that the plan left that state out entirely and that, based on the placement of the other proposed east-west roads, a highway numbered 60 logically should run through Kentucky. Kentucky subsequently received the route number 60, and the original Route 60 was changed first to 62 and then to 66 in the final version of the plan, approved on November 11, 1926.
The original eastern terminus of the route in Chicago was at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Jackson Boulevard; a few years later it was moved some blocks east to U.S. Route 41, better known as Lake Shore Drive. The western terminus in Los Angeles was originally at Broadway and 7th Street; later it was moved westward to U.S. Route 101 ALT (now Lincoln Boulevard at Olympic Boulevard) in Santa Monica, California. Among the other cities served by the route were, from east to west, Springfield, Illinois; St. Louis, Springfield, and Joplin in Missouri; Tulsa and Oklahoma City in Oklahoma; Amarillo, Texas; Tucumcari, Santa Fe (later bypassed), Albuquerque, and Gallup in New Mexico; Holbrook, Flagstaff, and Kingman in Arizona; and Needles, Barstow, and San Bernardino in California.
By the mid-1930s, Route 66 was already being called the “Main Street of America.” Early promoters, notably John Woodruff of Springfield, Missouri, and Cyrus Avery of Tulsa, had envisioned a great road linking towns across the continent, and the organizations they founded to advance the idea were in effect multistate chambers of commerce. True to the promoters’ foresight, traffic on the highway increased, a growing share of it long-distance, and the need for food, fuel, repairs, and shelter transformed the economies of the towns through which the route passed. The development of novel methods of merchandising to the transient customer that became commonplace in mid-20th-century America—drive-in and drive-up businesses, fast food, motor inns, and roadside advertising—can to a great degree be traced to the influence of Route 66 in those towns. The large-scale migration to California of the “Okies,” dispossessed rural people from the Dust Bowl states during the 1930s, accelerated that development and also produced yet another byname for the highway, the “Mother Road,” so called in John Steinbeck’s novel of that migration, The Grapes of Wrath (1939).
The explosion of automobile traffic that followed the end of World War II provided the perfect milieu for a song memorializing the journey “from Chicago to LA, more than two thousand miles all the way.” Written by Bobby Troup and recorded by Nat King Cole in 1946 and by many other artists in subsequent years, “Route 66” invited the listener to “get your kicks” on that very road. From 1960 to 1964 a television series of the same name featured two adventurers who cruised the highway in a Chevrolet Corvette sports car. At the same time, the rapid expansion in traffic meant that Route 66, even more than many other interstate routes, was carrying far more vehicles than it was designed to bear.
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More and heavier traffic, more stringent safety requirements, and improved construction methods created a demand for a new kind of federal highway system. By the time U.S. Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, a few segments of Route 66 had already been superseded by newer, wider, and safer roads. The act authorized federal funding for an Interstate Highway System of such roads, and, despite an appeal by the state of Missouri on behalf of all the Route 66 states, there was to be no Interstate 66. Route 66 gradually was replaced by portions of several of the new high-speed limited-access superhighways. In many places these highways paralleled the old route or were built over its right-of-way. By 1977 the route had ceased to exist in Illinois, and in October 1984 the last segment was bypassed in Arizona. Route 66 was formally decommissioned on June 27, 1985.
Many private individuals, organizations, and towns have preserved portions of the roadway, businesses that throve on it, or collections of memorabilia. Among several museums dedicated to the route are those in Clinton, Oklahoma, and Barstow, California.
Route 66 was built on centuries of travel, following Native American and Spanish trails, then the iron and steel grooves of railroad tracks as they cut across the American landscape, passing through the major bioregions of the North American continent.
Aug 17, 2022 · Referenced in countless songs, movies and quotes, Route 66 is a cultural American icon deeply ingrained in the countries history. While the original US 66 was officially decommissioned in 1985, its importance has never faded and its legacy lives on.
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Apr 30, 2022 · 1. Route 66 was built as an efficient way to get from Chicago to Los Angeles. Over the course of the 1920s, car ownership nearly tripled in the United States, surging from 8 to 23 million...
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