Encyclopedia
U.S. Route 66, was a highway in the
U.S. Highway system. One of the original federal routes, US 66 was established on November 11, 1926, though signs did not go up until the following year. It originally ran from
Chicago,
Illinois through
St. Louis, Missouri,
Kansas,
Oklahoma,
Texas,
New Mexico,
Arizona and
California before ending at
Los Angeles for a total of 2,448 miles .
Route 66 underwent many improvements and realignments. Most of those affected the total mileage somewhat. One of those resulted in the movement of the endpoint from
Los Angeles to
Santa Monica. Contrary to common belief, Route 66 never ran to the ocean; it terminated onto what was then US-101, at the intersection of what is today Lincoln Boulevard and Olympic Boulevard.
Route 66 was a major migratory path west, especially during the
Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and supported the economies of the communities through which the road passed. People became prosperous due to the growing popularity of the highway, and those same people later fought to keep the highway alive even with the growing threat of the new
Interstate Highway System.
US 66 was officially decommissioned on June 27, 1985 after it was decided the route was no longer relevant and had been replaced by the Interstate Highway System. Portions of the road that passed through Illinois, New Mexico, and Arizona have been designated a National Scenic Byway of the name "
Historic Route 66". It has begun to return to maps in this form.
History of the highway
Birth and rise of Route 66
|-
|
CA|314
|505
|-
|
AZ|401
|645
|-
|NM
|487
|784
|-
|
TX|186
|299
|-
|
OK|432
|695
|-
|
KS|13
|21
|-
|MO
|317
|510
|-
|IL
|301
|484
|-
|Total in 1926
|2448
|3939
|}
Championed by Oklahoman Cyrus Avery in 1923 when the first talks about a national highway system began, US 66 was first signed in 1927 as one of the original
U.S. Highways, although it was not completely paved until 1938. Avery was adamant that the highway have a round number and had proposed number 60 to identify it. A controversy erupted over the number 60, largely from delegates from
Kentucky which wanted a
Virginia Beach–Los Angeles highway to be
US 60 and
US 62 between Chicago and
Springfield, Missouri. Arguments and counter-arguments continued and the final conclusion was to have US 60 run between Virginia Beach, Virginia and Springfield, Missouri, and the Chicago–
Los Angeles, California route be US 62. Avery settled on "66" because he thought the double-digit number would be easy to remember as well as pleasant to say and hear.
After the new federal highway system was officially created, Avery called for the establishment of the U.S. Highway 66 Association to promote the complete paving of the highway from end to end and to promote travel down the highway. In 1927, in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, the association was officially established with John T. Woodruff of Springfield, Missouri elected the first president. In 1928, the association made its first attempt at publicity, the "Bunion Derby", a footrace from Los Angeles to
New York City, of which the path from Los Angeles to Chicago would be on Route 66. The publicity worked: several dignitaries, including
Will Rogers, greeted the runners at certain points on the route. The association went on to serve as a voice for businesses along the highway until it disbanded in 1976.
Traffic grew on the highway due to the geography through which it passed. Much of the highway was essentially flat and this made the highway a popular
truck route. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s saw many farming families head west for agricultural jobs in California. Route 66 became the main road of travel for these people, often derogatorily called "
Okies". And during the Depression, it gave some relief to communities located on the highway. The route passed through numerous small towns, and with the growing traffic on the highway, helped create the rise of mom-and-pop businesses up and down the highway.
Much of the early highway, like all the other early highways, was gravel or graded dirt. Due to the efforts of the US Highway 66 Association, Route 66 became the first highway completely paved in 1938. Several places were dangerous, more than one part of the highway was nicknamed "Bloody 66" and gradually work was done to realign these segments to remove dangerous curves. However, one section was fraught with sharp hairpin turns and was the steepest along the entire route—so much so that some early travelers, too frightened at the prospect of driving such a potentially dangerous road, hired locals to navigate the winding grade. The section remained until 1953—despite this, Route 66 continued to be a popular route.
During
World War II, more migration west occurred because of war-related industries in California. Route 66, already popular and fully paved, became one of the main routes and also served for moving military equipment.
Fort Leonard Wood in
Missouri was located near the highway, which was locally upgraded quickly to a divided highway to help with military traffic.
In the 1950s, Route 66 became the main highway for vacationers heading to Los Angeles. The road passed through the
Painted Desert and near the
Grand Canyon.
Meteor Crater in Arizona was another popular stop. This sharp rise in tourism in turn gave rise to a burgeoning trade in all manner of roadside attractions including
teepee-shaped motels,
frozen custard stands,
Indian curio shops, and reptile farms.
Meramec Caverns near
St. Louis began advertising on barns, billing itself as the "
Jesse James hideout". The
Big Texan advertised a free 72 ounce steak dinner to anyone who could eat the whole thing in an hour. It also marked the birth of the fast-food industry: Red's Giant Hamburgs in Springfield, Missouri, site of the first
drive-through restaurant, and the first
McDonald's in
San Bernardino, California. Changes like these to the landscape further cemented 66's reputation as a near-perfect microcosm of the culture of America, now linked by the automobile.
Changes in routing
Four major sections of US 66 underwent major realignments during the 1930s.
In 1930, between
Springfield, Illinois and
East St. Louis, Illinois, US 66 was shifted further east to what is now roughly I-55. The original alignment followed the current
Illinois Route 4.
From downtown St. Louis to
Gray Summit, Missouri, US 66 originally went down Market Street and Manchester Road . In 1932, this route was changed, the original alignment never being viewed as anything more than temporary. The planned route was down Watson Road , but Watson Road had not yet been completed.
From west of
El Reno, Oklahoma to
Bridgeport, Oklahoma, US 66 turned north to
Calumet, Oklahoma and then west to
Geary, Oklahoma then southwest across the
South Canadian River over a
suspension toll bridge into
Bridgeport, Oklahoma. In 1933, a straighter cut-off route was completed from west of
El Reno, Oklahoma directly to a point one mile south of
Bridgeport, Oklahoma crossing over a 38-span steel
pony truss bridge over the South Canadian River and bypassing both Calumet and Geary by several miles.
From west of
Santa Rosa, New Mexico to north of
Los Lunas, New Mexico, the road originally turned north from current I-40 along much of what is now US 84 to near
Las Vegas, followed
I-25 through
Santa Fe and
Albuquerque to Los Lunas and then turned northwest along the present State Highway 6 alignment to a point near Laguna. In 1937, a straight-line route was completed from west of Santa Rosa through Moriarty and east-west through Albuquerque and west to Laguna. This newer routing saved travelers as much as four hours of travel through New Mexico.
Also, US 66 was rerouted around several larger cities via bypass or beltline routes to permit travelers to avoid city traffic congestion. Some of those cities included Springfield, Illinois; St. Louis, Missouri, Springfield, Missouri;
Joplin, Missouri; and
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Decline
The beginning of the end for Route 66 came in 1956 with the signing of the Interstate Highway Act by President
Dwight Eisenhower. As a general fighting in the
European theater during World War II, Eisenhower was impressed by Germany's high-speed roadways, or "
Autobahnen". Eisenhower envisioned a similar system of roads for the US in which one could conceivably drive at high speed from one end of the country to the other without stopping, as well as making it easier to mobilize troops in the event of a national emergency.
During its nearly 60-year existence, Route 66 was under constant change. As highway engineering became more sophisticated, engineers constantly sought more direct routes between cities and towns. Increased traffic led to a number of major and minor realignments of US 66 through the years, particularly in the years immediately following World War II when Illinois began widening US 66 to four lanes through virtually the entire state from Chicago to the
Mississippi River just east of St. Louis, Missouri, and included bypasses around virtually all of the towns. By the early-to-mid 1950s, Missouri also upgraded its sections of US 66 to four lanes complete with bypasses. Most of the newer four-lane 66 paving in both states was upgraded into the interstate highway system in later years.
One of the remnants of Route 66 is the highway now known as Veterans Parkway, east and south of Normal, Illinois, and
Bloomington, Illinois. The two sweeping curves on the southeast and southwest of the cities originally were intended to easily handle traffic at speeds up to 100 miles per hour, as part of an effort to make Illinois 66 an Autobahn equivalent for military transport.
In 1953, the first major bypassing of US 66 occurred in Oklahoma with the opening of the Turner Turnpike between Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The new 88-mile toll road paralleled US 66 for its entire length and bypassed each of the towns along 66. The Turner Turnpike was joined in 1957 by the new
Will Rogers Turnpike, which connected Tulsa with the Oklahoma-Missouri border west of Joplin, Missouri, again paralleling US 66 and bypassing the towns in northeastern Oklahoma in addition to the entire state of Kansas. Both Oklahoma turnpikes were soon designated as
Interstate 44, along with the US 66 bypass at Tulsa that connected the city with both turnpikes.
In some cases, such as many areas in Illinois, the new Interstate not only paralleled the old Route 66, it actually incorporated much of it. A typical approach was to build one new set of lanes, then move one direction of traffic to it, then rebuild those old lanes as the new lanes for the other direction of traffic, and finally abandon the other old set of lanes or convert them into a
frontage road.
The same scenario was used in western Oklahoma when US 66 was initially upgraded to a four-lane highway such as from Sayre through Erick to the Texas border at Texola in 1957 and 1958 where the old paving was retained for westbound traffic and a new parallel lane built for eastbound traffic , and on two other sections; from Canute to Elk City in 1959 and Hydro to Weatherford in 1960 - both of which were upgraded with the construction of a new westbound lane in 1966 to bring the highway up to full interstate standards and demoting the old US 66 paving to frontage road status. In the intial process of constructing I-40 across western Oklahoma, the state also included projects to upgrade the through routes in El Reno, Weatherford, Clinton, Canute, Elk City, Sayre, Erick and Texola to four-lane highways not only to provide seamless transitions from the rural sections of I-40 from both ends of town but also to provide easy access to those cities in later years after the I-40 bypasses were completed.
In New Mexico as in most other states, rural sections of I-40 were to be constructed first with bypasses around cities to come later. However, some business and civic leaders in cities along US 66 were completely opposed to bypassing fearing loss of business and tax revenues. In 1963, the New Mexico Legislature enacted legislation that banned the construction of interstate bypasses around cities by local request. This legislation was short-lived, however, due to pressures from Washington and threat of loss of federal highway funds so it was rescinded by 1965. In 1964, Tucumcari and San Jon became the first cities in New Mexico to work out an agreement with state and federal officials in determining the locations of their I-40 bypasses as close to their business areas as possible in order to permit easy access for highway travelers to their localities. Other cities soon fell in line including Santa Rosa, Moriarty, Grants and Gallup although it wasn't until well into the 1970s that most of those cities would be bypassed by I-40.
By the late 1960s, most of the rural sections of US 66 had been replaced by I-40 across New Mexico with the most notable exception being the 40-mile strip from the Texas border at Glenrio west through San Jon to Tucumcari, which was becoming increasingly treacherous due to heavier and heavier traffic on the narrow two-lane highway. During 1968 and 1969, this section of US 66 was often referred to by locals and travelers as "Slaughter Lane" due to numerous injury and fatal accidents on this stretch. Local and area business and civic leaders and news media called upon state and federal highway officials to get I-40 built through the area, however, disputes over proposed highway routing in the vicinty of San Jon held up construction plans for several years as federal officials proposed that I-40 run some five to six miles north of that city while local and state officials insisted on following a proposed route that touched the northern city limits of San Jon. In November of 1969, a truce was reached when federal highway officials agreed to build the I-40 route just outside of the city, therefore providing local businesses dependent on highway traffic easy access to and from the expressway via the north-south highway that crossed old US 66 in San Jon. Interstate 40 was completed from Glenrio to the east side of San Jon in 1976 and extended west to Tucumcari in 1981, including the bypasses around both cities.
Originally, highway officials planned for the last section of US 66 to be bypassed by interstates in Texas, but as was the case in many places, lawsuits held up construction of the new interstates. The US Highway 66 Association had become a voice for the people who feared the loss of their businesses. Since the interstates only provided access via ramps at intersections, travelers could not pull directly off a highway into a business. At first, plans were laid out to allow to be placed in interstate medians. Such lawsuits effectively prevented this on all but toll roads. Some towns in Missouri threatened to sue the state if the US 66 designation was removed from the road, though lawsuits never materialized.
Several businesses were well known to be on US 66, and fear of losing the number resulted in the state of Missouri officially requesting the designation "Interstate 66" for the St. Louis to Oklahoma City section of the route, but it was denied. In 1984, Arizona also saw its final stretch of highway decommissioned with the completion of
Interstate 40 through
Williams. Finally, with decertification of the highway by the
American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials the following year, U.S. Route 66 officially ceased to exist.
With the decommissioning of US 66, no single interstate route was designated to replace it.
Interstate 55 covered the section from Chicago to St. Louis; Interstate 44 carried the traffic on to Oklahoma City;
Interstate 40 took the largest chunk, replacing 66 to
Barstow, California;
Interstate 15 took over for the route to San Bernardino; and
Interstate 10 carried Route 66's traffic across the Los Angeles metro area to Santa Monica.
After decertification
When the highway was decommissioned, sections of the road were disposed of in various ways. Within many cities, the route became a "business loop" for the interstate. Some sections became state roads, local roads, private drives, or were abandoned completely. Although it is no longer possible to drive Route 66 uninterrupted all the way from Chicago to Los Angeles, more than eighty percent of the original route and alternate alignments are still drivable with careful planning. Some stretches are quite well-preserved, including one between Springfield, Missouri and Tulsa.
Some states have kept the 66 designation for parts of the highway, albeit as state roads. Missouri highways
366, 266, and
66 are all original sections of the highway.
Oklahoma State Highway 66 remains as the alternate "free" route near its turnpikes. A long segment in Arizona signed as
Arizona State Route 66 links
Seligman to
Kingman. A surface street stretch between
San Bernardino and
La Verne to the east of Los Angeles retains its number as State Route 66. Several county roads and city streets have also retained the "66" name.
Revival
In 1990, Route 66 associations were founded separately in both Arizona and Missouri. Other groups in the other Route 66 states soon followed. The same year, the state of Missouri declared Route 66 in that state a "State Historic Route". The first "Historic Route 66" marker was erected on Kearney Street at Glenstone Avenue in Springfield, Missouri . Other historic markers now line—at times sporadically—the entire 2,400 mile length of road. A section of the road in Arizona was placed on the
National Register of Historic Places; the
Arroyo Seco Parkway in the Los Angeles Area and Route 66 in New Mexico have been made into National Scenic Byways; and in 2005, the State of Missouri made the road a state scenic byway from Illinois to Kansas. In the cities of
Rancho Cucamonga,
Rialto, and
San Bernardino in California, there are US 66 signs erected along Foothill Boulevard and on Huntington Drive in the city of
Arcadia.
Route 66 and American pop culture
Route 66 gave its name to a company and also was immortalized in literature, popular music, and television. Although several businesses became associated with Route 66 because of their being on or near the highway,
Phillips 66 actually took part of their name directly from the highway.
Because the road through Oklahoma was relatively flat and straight, two chemical engineers decided to test a new
gasoline from a Tulsa oil company in the late 1920s. The company car they were driving ran exceptionally well on the new blend, prompting the engineer in the passenger seat to exclaim that the car was "going like sixty". His companion looked at the speedometer and said that they were going more like 66 miles/hour . The combination of the highway number and the speed of the car led to the naming of Phillips 66 gasoline, a brand still marketed today.
In 1939, California writer
John Steinbeck published
The Grapes of Wrath is a work of fiction written by John Steinbeck [i] and published in 1939 [i]. ...
, his novel about the westward migration of Oklahoma's Dust Bowl farmers to California's San Joaquin Valley. The book described the problems many of them faced, including prejudice and poverty, as they traveled to a hopefully better life. In this book, he spent a chapter describing the path west, which funnels to Oklahoma City and continues down Route 66. He referred to Route 66 as the "Mother Road", a nickname the highway still retains. The book won a
Pulitzer Prize and made the road even more famous.
In 1946, jazz composer and pianist Bobby Troup wrote his best-known song, "
Route 66", after driving the highway himself to get to California. He presented it to
Nat King Cole who in turn made it one of the biggest hit singles of his career. The title was suggested by Troup's first wife, Cynthia, who accompanied him on the trip. The song later became a hit for
Chuck Berry, and has been recorded by many subsequent artists, including
The Rolling Stones,
Depeche Mode and John Mayer.
The highway also gave its name to a popular
television show,
Route 66, seen from 1960 through 1964 on
CBS. The show featured
Martin Milner and
George Maharis as
Tod and
Buz, two young men in a
Corvette looking for adventure along America's highways. Maharis was later replaced by
Glenn Corbett, who played a returning Viet Nam vet named
Linc. Strangely, though the entire program was filmed on location, it was rarely shot along Route 66. Since then, the Corvette has become the car most associated with Route 66. The theme song from the TV series, long a staple of General Motors advertising for the Corvette, was written and played by
Nelson Riddle and his band.
Another famous
GM product has a strong connection to Route 66: The
Cadillac Ranch, located near
Amarillo, Texas, features a row of ten vintage Cadillacs standing up at an angle, with their front ends buried into the ground.
An
NBA Development League basketball team, the
Tulsa 66ers, was named after the route. The road also lent its name to a
minor league baseball team, the
Inland Empire 66ers.
Currently,
K-Mart's line of jeans also bears the name of the former highway, branded as "Route 66".
On the Disney's film
A Goofy Movie is a 1995 [i] animated feature [i] and musical film [i], produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation [i] ...
.
Goofy and
Max are going on vacation using Route 66.
In the
Stargate SG-1 is an American [i] television series [i] based upon the 1994 [i] science fiction [i] ...
episode "1969", the SG-1 team drives a
hippie bus along much of the route traversed by the highway, with prop
U.S. Route shield signs posted at the side of the road.
The highway was referred to as "the fabled Route 66" in Stacy Peralta's
Dogtown and Z-Boys.The
Disney/
Pixar movie
Cars is set mainly in the fictional town of Radiator Springs, located on Route 66 and bypassed by I-40. Radiator Springs was based largely on
Amboy, California, an actual Route 66 town that saw a rapid decline when I-40 opened in the early 1970s. The film was originally titled
Route 66, but had its name changed to avoid confusion with the 1960s-vintage TV show. It opened June 9, 2006. Several familiar sites associated with Route 66 appear in the film, including a visual homage to
Cadillac Ranch, and to the U-Drop Inn in Shamrock, Texas and the Wigwam motels in Holbrook, Arizona and on the border of San Bernardino and Rialto in California.
In the
manga Shaman King is both an anime [i] series and a manga [i] series by Hiroyuki Takei [i]. ...
, after
Yoh Asakura and his group land in America, they are unsure if they are actually there until
Tao Ren points out they are after he spots the sign for Route 66.
Nicknames
Over the years, U.S. Route 66 received many nicknames:
- The Great Diagonal Way—Right after Route 66 was commissioned, it received this nickname because a large section of the highway ran diagonally, unlike the other highways.
- The Main Street of America—Advertised as such by the US Highway 66 Association to promote the highway. The title had also been claimed by supporters of U.S. Route 40, but the Route 66 group was more successful.
- The Mother Road—Called this by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath is a work of fiction written by John Steinbeck [i] and published in 1939 [i]. ...
, the title continued to be applied to the highway. - The Will Rogers Highway— "officially" named this by the US Highway 66 Association in 1952. A plaque dedicating the highway to the humorist is still located opposite the western terminus of Route 66 in Santa Monica, California. There were more plaques like this; one can be found in Galena, Kansas. It was originally located on the Kansas-Missouri state line, but moved to the Howard Litch Memorial Park in 2001.
Bannered routes
Several alternate alignments of US 66 occurred because of traffic issues.
Business routes , bypass routes ,
alternate routes , and "optional routes" came into being.
- U.S. Route 66 Alternate: Bolingbrook, IL–Gardner, IL
- U.S. Route 66 Business: Towanda, IL–Bloomington, IL
- U.S. Route 66 Business: Lincoln, IL
- U.S. Route 66 Business: Springfield, IL
- U.S. Route 66 Business: Mitchell, IL–East St. Louis, IL
- U.S. Route 66 Business: St. Louis, MO–Sunset Hills, MO
- U.S. Route 66 Optional: Venice, IL–St. Louis, MO
- U.S. Route 66 Bypass: Mitchell, IL–Sunset Hills, MO
- U.S. Route 66 Business: Springfield, MO
- U.S. Route 66 Bypass: Springfield, MO
- U.S. Route 66 Alternate Business: Springfield, MO
- U.S. Route 66 Alternate: Carthage, MO
- U.S. Route 66 Business: Carterville, MO–Webb City
- U.S. Route 66 Alternate: Webb City, MO–Joplin, MO
- U.S. Route 66 Business: Joplin, MO
- U.S. Route 66 Bypass: Joplin, MO
- U.S. Route 66 Business: Tulsa, OK
- U.S. Route 66 Business: Oklahoma City, OK
- U.S. Route 66 Business: Clinton, OK
- U.S. Route 66 Business: Amarillo, TX
- U.S. Route 66 Business: San Bernardino, CA
- U.S. Route 66 Alternate: Pasadena, CA–Los Angeles, CA
Related U.S. routes
Daughters of U.S. Route 66:
Related state routes
