Why We Still Traverse Route 66

This year, Route 66 enthusiasts celebrate the centennial of the historic road that captured America’s imagination.  Though decommissioned 40 years ago, the erstwhile major transport artery that once pulsed through America‘s heartland connecting Chicago to Los Angeles remains embedded in our collective consciousness.   The mystic number, maternal moniker and timeless song still draw travelers to the phantom highway and Americana.   

The figure 66 conveys a spirit of optimism and idealism say numerologists.  Indeed, that  rhythmic double-digit ending with “x” for kick resonates, and visually looks cool when 66 frames within its’ highway shield. 

John Steinbeck bestowed the road with her maternal moniker in The Grapes of Wrath when he described those fleeing the ravages of the Depression: “…they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the Mother Road, the road of flight.”.

America boomed after the War when Bobby Troup composed his classic song (Get your Kicks on) Route 66 with the litany of towns along the way:

            If you ever plan to motor west
            Travel my way, take the highway that is best
            Get your kicks on Route Sixty-six
            It winds from Chicago to LA
            More than two thousand miles all the way…..

Adventurers heeded that clarion call and ventured west where emerging enterprises  along the roadway greeted them.  Indeed, the Mother Road meant mother’s milk for gas stations and repair shops, cabins and motels, cafes and diners, as well as kitschy souvenir shops and trading posts oft flanked with faux tepees, cavalry forts and penned buffalo to attract visitors. These mom-and-pop businesses operated free from franchise uniformity, which gave the roadway an ever-changing aspect

Ironically, the traffic that boomed trade outgrew the road that buckled from the weight of America’s burgeoning population.  The Interstate bypassed 66’s doomed businesses like the vacuum whoosh of a Freightliner barreling down the expressway.  One speaking for those on the other side of history stated succinctly:  “The day the traffic moved, well that was it.”  Businesses went from full house to poor house.

When Troup cut the ribbon that symbolized the opening of the last stretch of Interstate and the end of Route 66 as a part of our national highway system, he lamented: “I don’t why you’re cheering; this is an end of an era.”  When the crowd dispersed, they left behind a memory mirage floating above the old road.

A Road Less Traveled.                                                                                              Interstate highways give us greater vehicular capacity and higher speeds.  But as Charles Kuralt remarked: “Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.”  

So many roadsters exit the Interstate’s harried traffic, flanking billboards and ubiquitous chain stores in search of something new via something old.  They do not want to make time, but to take time.   They traverse the Mother Road, 85% of which remains extant.  

Beginning in Chicago, the road runs south through Illinois’ farmland, bridges the Mississippi River to old St. Lou, and veers in a southwesterly diagonal over Missouri’s undulated Ozarks woodlands to Oklahoma, biting off a corner of Kansas along the way.  A forward ho! follows with a run over the arid steppes of the Texas panhandle, an enchanted jaunt through New Mexico and over the continental divide to Arizona’s high country, then spanning the Colorado River for a stretch run across the Mojave desert before reaching dreamland LA and the Pacific coast. 

The old road requires navigation.  Fragments parallel the interstate as emasculated service roads; other sections part from the bypassing Interstate to link visitors to old town centers.  Remarkably, Route 66’s apparition takes form during many two-lane traverses out of sight and sound of the super slab.

Those two-lane runs into the countryside differ from the interstate’s construct that scoured the land with broad swaths of concrete and uniformity needed to accommodate high speed traffic.  Conversely, old 66 follows the terrain’s contours and feels more in tune with the land rather than zooming through it.  A path uninterrupted by commercial call and competitive traffic infuses a road trip with serenity in a way that no Interstate ever could.

Road warriors venture out on the Mother Road to lodge in retro roadside motels, cross steel truss bridges, view vintage gas stations, dally in towns to nosh in diners, observe the ruins of abandoned businesses, and eyeball the curios and the curious discovered along the way. 

A marker at the old road’s terminus reads: “Santa Monica—66—the end of the trail.”   But Route 66 never ends in the imagination of American roadsters.  The Mother Road continues her journey through time and mind, providing a unique way to experience the culture and history of America the Beautiful.

(click below for long version about the Mother Road past and present: Route 66’s Centennial of Americana and History)