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The 2006 animated film Cars had the working title Route 66, and described the decline of the fictional Radiator Springs, nearly a ghost town once its mother road, US 66, was bypassed by Interstate 40. The title was eventually changed to simply Cars to avoid confusion with the 1960s television series. [80]
- Overview
- Post Script
There’s a piece of the road in the museum—square slabs of aged asphalt excised from west of Oklahoma City.
I’ve never seen such a thing in a museum. I have seen shrunken human heads and Tyrannosaurus teeth, polished suits of armor and a queen’s underpants, but never before have I seen a chunk of road lying in a museum like a framed work of art.
I stare at the little bits of broken stone, forever frozen in the flattened pavement and wonder, how many cars passed over this spot? How many Midwestern thunderstorms rained down into those microscopic holes, how many ’57 Chevys and milk trucks trundled by, how many people’s weight helped settle, then polish, then crack and break this special bit of Route 66?
The display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is big and peppy, with Route 66 scrawled out in red on a billboard-sized map of America. A 1929 Oakland Sedan and 1936 Ford truck are parked beneath a vintage sign for Phillips 66, a gasoline that was first tested along Route 66.
Behind me, a few hundred spring breakers whiz past, uninterested—all except one young boy who stops to gawk before beckoning his mother, “C’mere! It’s Route 66!”
The kid is young, maybe nine or ten years old, but he’s about as thrilled as most kids would be if they were slapping glass at the gorilla house at the zoo. His joy is infectious, so that suddenly, I get excited, too—like I zapped up all that little kid energy with a pair of jumper cables and remembered that tomorrow, I will begin driving down Route 66.
•Despite popular belief, Route 66 is not a fixed roadway—it’s a flowing river of time and towns and turns that have come and gone and changed. Whenever possible I shall attempt to follow the original route as spelled out, turn by turn, in the guidebooks, maps and websites that I have studied. This will not be possible all the time, as some original sections of the road no longer exist, but whenever I can, I shall stay committed to taking every detour back to the real Route 66.
•I say Route (rüt) 66, as opposed to Route (raut) 66, though according to most American English dictionaries, both pronunciations are correct. Some linguists suggest that Route (rüt) is more common in the East, whereas one is more likely to hear Route (raut) in the West (I shall be paying close attention to any shifts in the vernacular along the way). For the record, the word route derives from the Old French rut, which comes from the Latin ruptus (to burst), which is the same root for the English word “rupture”. And I sincerely hope that my etymological curiosity is not, in fact, some type of tire situation foreshadowing.
Sep 17, 2024 · 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).
- It Was One Of America’s First Fully Funded Federal Roads. Route 66 was one of the first fully funded roads on the Federal Highway System. In the early 1900s, the United States was still largely a rural country, and transportation infrastructure was lacking.
- Its Popularity Helped Its Decommissioning. Route 66 was officially decommissioned in 1985. The highway’s popularity helped to raise awareness of its importance and the need for its improvement, the construction of bypasses, and the widening of lanes.
- The National Park Service Plays a Role in Preserving Route 66. The National Park Service maintains the National Register of Historic Places, which consists of an exhaustive list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects significant to American heritage.
- Route 66 Passes Through 10 Protected American Public Lands. As well as countless unique roadside attractions, Route 66 also passes several nationally registered historical places, three national forests—Mark Twain National Forest, San Bernardino National Forest, and Kaibab National Forest—and one National Park—Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.
- 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 vehicles.
- The “Father of Route 66” was an Oklahoma businessman. Cyrus Avery, a teacher turned oil and gas company president, was a driving (pun intended) force behind much of Route 66’s early development.
- In 1928, promoters held a foot race across Route 66. In 1928, a member of the Route 66 Association named Charles C. Pyle spearheaded an ambitious promotional plan for the new highway: a race from Los Angeles to New York City.
- The New Deal helped finish Route 66. Though it had opened officially in 1926, Route 66 wasn’t even close to finished by the time the Great Depression threw the country into disarray.
Sep 11, 2023 · Known as the Central Avenue of America or the Mother Street, Route 66 has caught the creative minds of voyagers, craftsmen, and authors. The following are ten motivations behind why Route 66 is so popular: 1. Route 66 is of historical importance.
Route 66, known by several names throughout the years, including the “Mother Road,” “Main Street of America,” and the “Will Rogers Highway,” was an old highway that served travelers for more than 50 years before totally succumbing to the “new and improved” interstate system.
