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Historical
Background
CONTENTS
And Then Came...
INTRODUCTION
The history of this country has included a number of periods of human migration.
Shortly after its emergence from the War of Independence, the new nation saw the steady
outward drift of its people across the Appalachians into the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys.
Navigable rivers and foot trails and military roads were the earliest transportation
network. While some turnpikes leading to and from burgeoning centers of trade were
surfaced with gravel or "pounded stone," most roads were improved only to the
extent of removing stumps, boulders, and other major irregularities. Most backwoods trails
remained impassable to wheeled vehicles, especially during the winter or subsequent spring
thaws. For the most part, bridges were nonexistent; early travelers forded smaller streams
and crossed larger ones by ferry.
At the beginning of the 19th century the first federal subsidies of roads and highways
were granted. East of the Mississippi River, postal roads and public thoroughfares like
the Cumberland Road benefited from limited government appropriations for construction and
maintenance. Meanwhile, west of the Mississippi, land-hungry settlers traveled wagon roads
forged earlier by U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. When Mexico ceded to the
United States the vast western territories from Texas to the Pacific Ocean, the great
trails Santa Fe, Oregon, California and Mormon made possible a mass westward movement of
Americans in search of economic prosperity and free land. A century later, the rut-filled
corridors of the western frontier yielded to the smooth-surfaced, all-weather highways of
a highly urbanized, postwar America. U.S. Highway 66 was one of several roads that
hastened the continuous flow of emigrants west during the most recent decades.
Americans assumed an identity as a people on the move, constantly in hope of job
opportunities and new beginnings. The trend westward continued well into the present
century. When the United States Bureau of Census published its findings in 1980, it
revealed for the first time that neither the industrialized Northeast nor the agricultural
Midwest were the nation's most populous regions. Census figures for 1980 indicated that
most Americans resided either west of the Mississippi River or south of the Mason-Dixon
Line. A decade later, the West, traditionally a region of uninterrupted vistas and
sparsely populated states, became decidedly urban. The 1980 census showed that 78% of all
westerners lived in metropolitan areas (defined as major cities with populations in excess
of 50,000 inhabitants). While this demographic transition from snow belt to sunbelt was in
evidence as early as 1920, the decades from 1930 to 1980 clearly marked a high point in
the migration of thousands of Americans.
Not since the great Oregon migrations and California gold rush of the 1840s had the
nation witnessed such a dramatic shift in population from east to west. When contrasted
with demographic figures for the 1940s and 1950s, however, the westward movement of the
previous century pales in comparison. The most obvious consequence of this major
population influx to the West Coast was the increase in metropolitan areas in the region,
which clearly outpaced the remainder of the United States. The West by 1980 added
39,121,000 metropolitan residents, or 1.4 times its entire regional population in 1940.
During the decades 1940 to 1980 the average size of western metropolitan areas increased
more rapidly than those in either the East or the South. Moreover, while the western
metropolis was substantially smaller than its eastern counterparts in 1940, it was
effectively equal in size by 1980. Whereas the metropolitan West accounted for merely 9%
of the nation's residents in 1940, it harbored 23% just four decades later. In fact, 14 of
the 20 American metropolitan areas with the largest population increases since 1980 were
west of the Mississippi River.
The urbanization of the 20th century West resulted in no small measure from America's
love affair with the automobile and the longstanding belief of millions of enthusiastic
motorists that the federal government should underwrite the cost of a comprehensive
network of all-weather, cross-country highways. U.S. Highway 66 was one of only a handful
of east-west corridors to appear early in the 20th century as a result of federal and
state partnerships. Still, the genesis of one of America's most popular modern highways is
rooted in the mid 1800s. Like the primitive trails that tenuously linked the vast open
spaces of the west to the population centers of the East and Midwest, U.S. Highway 66
evolved from a government-sponsored wagon road program initiated just before the Civil
War. In the 1900s America's infatuation with personal mobility brought forward the notion
of an all-weather, surfaced highway connecting Chicago to Los Angeles. Proponents joined a
populist-based national cause known as the "Good Roads Movement."
One response to the public outcry for an ocean-to-ocean highway was U.S. Highway 66.
What sets Route 66 apart from the other roads that were absorbed into the body of national
highways is (1) it was America's first continuously paved link between Los Angeles and
Chicago, gateway to the industrialized Northeast, and (2) it (along with the segments of
interstate highway that replaced it) remains the shortest all-weather route between these
two cities. To the average motorist the importance of Route 66 was that it reduced
cross-country travel between the Midwest and the Pacific Coast by at least two hundred
miles. Beginning at the corner of Jackson Boulevard and Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Route
66 wound 2,400 miles across America to Santa Monica, California. Its oiled surface etched
a trail across the landscape by way of St. Louis, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Amarillo,
Albuquerque, Flagstaff, San Bernardino, and Pasadena. Its broad, sweeping arch connected
Illinois with Missouri, then sliced through the agricultural Midwest, rolled across the
Great Plains, and crossed the desert Southwest. To many Americans, Route 66 represents
more than just an official highway. According to cultural geographer Arthur Krim, it
(Route 66) was the symbolic river of America moving west in the auto age of the twentieth
century. For others, the well traveled public road was a commercial lifeline. From its
inception in 1926, U.S. Highway 66 was designed to connect rural communities to their
respective metropolitan capitals. In so doing, gas stations, motels, "Mom and
Pop" restaurants, and grocery stores were built in the hope of servicing an
increasingly mobile public. When bypasses and interstate freeways were introduced in the
1960s to increase speed and reduce travel time, the economic base stimulated by the
appearance of Route 66 began to erode.
Route 66 is an excellent physical illustration of the method by which the nation's
highways evolved. There was a strong government commitment to serve its citizens, who were
becoming more dependent on highways for their livelihoods. Although it is only one of
several notable highways in America, Route 66 is revered by hundreds of thousands of
motorists as the model of the modern American highway and the emerging automobile culture
it serviced.
PRE-1926
U.S. Highway 66 had its origin in the wake of the nation's first trans-Mississippi
migration. In 1853 Congress commissioned Captain Amiel Weeks Whipple of the Army
Topographical Corps to conduct a survey for a proposed transcontinental railroad. Congress
opted against the railroad and instead subsidized a network of wagon roads intended to
improve military and civilian communications throughout the western frontier. In 1857
Congress commissioned Lieutenant Edward Fitzgerald Beale to chart a wagon road following
the 35th parallel from Fort Defiance (near the New Mexico/Arizona border) to the Colorado
River. Beal's Road, as the route came to be identified, established a vital military
transportation and communication link between Fort Smith near the Arkansas River and the
westernmost reaches of the Southwest. In underwriting the $200,000 expense to establish
what Lt. Beale felt certain would become "the great emigrant road to
California," the federal government provided the impetus for the creation of the
transcontinental railroad.>P> Beal's Road was the frontier antecedent of Route 66.
Interest in the route resurfaced under the National old Trails Road Movement when
motorists began to discuss the need for an ocean-to-ocean thoroughfare in the first
decades of this century. Promoters hoped to capitalize on the national appeal of the
Panama-Pacific Expositions, scheduled to open in San Diego and San Francisco in 1915, as
justification for federal subsidies of a continuously paved transcontinental highway. The
National Old Trails Road, as conceived in 1912, originated on the East Coast with branches
to Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and terminated on the West Coast at San Diego. The
road's promotional arm, the National Old Trails Road Association, supported two ideas
during its lifetime (1) it promoted improvement of the proposed ocean-to-ocean corridor as
it retraced the nation's historic trails, and (2) the association championed good roads in
America by advocating direct federal involvement in road construction in lieu of federal
aid to state agencies. This concept was eventually incorporated into federal highway
policy in 1916 and continues today.
The first leg of the ocean-to-ocean highway proposed by the National Old Trails
Association in 1912 originated in Washington, D.C., and traced the Cumberland Road, a
well-established historic avenue, to St. Louis. From Missouri, the highway followed the
Santa Fe Trail to Albuquerque and Santa Fe before taking a more southerly course through
Arizona to Flagstaff, gateway to the Grand Canyon. Flagstaff's pioneer lumberman Matthew
J. Riordan detailed the final leg of the route, which most closely approximates the 1927
orientation of U.S. Highway 66. Christened the "Grand Canyon Route," the road
was eventually constructed from Williams to Ashfork and Seligman in Yavapai County to
Topock on the Colorado River, where automobiles could be loaded on railway flatcars and
transported across an expansion bridge built by the Santa Fe Railroad to Needles,
California. From this desert community, the road proceeded 164 miles across the Mojave to
Barstow and the desert communities of Bakersfield and San Bernardino to San Diego.
The official origin of Route 66 was the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1921. A road
assessment taken a decade earlier estimated the total mileage of rural roads in America at
approximately 2.5 million miles, 10.5% of which were listed as surfaced. Of those 257,291
miles only 32,180 were paved with bituminous material, brick, or concrete. The Federal Aid
Highway Act of 1921, successor to the earlier highway appropriations legislation of 1916,
was designed to create a coherent highway network by requiring that federal aid be
concentrated upon such projects as will expedite the completion of an adequate and
connected system of highways, interstate in character. To that end, a minimum of 60% of
federal funds would be spent on what was designated the primary or interstate network.
It can be argued that the miracle of the 20th century was not the automobile, but the
construction of the vast network of highways that gave motorists someplace to go. In the
case of Route 66, the two technological achievements were together from the outset. The
Lincoln Highway, established to facilitate travel across the 3,000-mile stretch of
mountains and prairies between New York and San Francisco, predated Route 66 by more than
a decade. Nevertheless, from 1912 until the end of the First World War, cross-country
travel along the Lincoln Highway was largely limited to the wealthy few who could afford
an automobile and dared to challenge the uneven, ill-defined course of the road.
Route 66 was the result of America's infatuation with rapid mobility, mass
transportation, and technological change. Historian Richard Davies wrote, the automobile
constituted a personalized urban mass transit system, allowing the owner to travel
whenever or wherever he desired." Moreover, it provided a personal means of escape
from the congestion of metropolitan America. One significant effect of the increased use
of the automobile, according to Davies, was to reduce cross-country travel from an
adventure of the affluent and stout hearted to a relatively inexpensive and common
occurrence.
The 1920s were the first boom years for the automobile. In 1910, two years before the
authorization of the Lincoln Highway, there were 180,000 registered automobiles in the
United States a ratio of about one for every 5,000 citizens. During the subsequent decade
more than 17 million cars, trucks, and buses were added to America's motor fleet. (This
figure increased 6.5 times to 112 million in 1970s. Not surprisingly, Americans demanded
improved highways to meet the growing number of vehicles on America's roadways. It was the
federal government's early response to these demands that first breathed life into Route
66.
Although entrepreneurs Cyrus Avery of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and John Woodruff of
Springfield, Missouri, deserve most of the credit for promoting the idea of an
interregional link between Chicago and Los Angeles, their lobbying efforts were not
realized until their dreams merged with the national program of highway and road
development. While legislation for public highways first appeared in 1916, with revisions
in 1921, it was not until Congress enacted an even more comprehensive version of the act
in 1925 that the government executed its plan for national highway construction.
Officially, the numerical designation 66 was assigned to the Chicago-to-Los Angeles route
in the summer of 1926. With that designation came its acknowledgement as one of the
nation's principal east-west arteries. For the most part, U.S. 66 was just an assignment
of a number to an already existing network of state-managed roads, most of which were in
poor condition.
From the outset, public road planners intended U.S. 66 to connect the main streets of
rural and urban communities along its course for the most practical of reasons: most small
towns had no prior access to a major national thoroughfare. Before 1926, for example,
Cyrus Avery's hometown of Tulsa, and most of what was once called "Indian
Territory" before Oklahoma achieved statehood in 1907, claimed few improved roads. In
those days it took six hours to drive the 103 miles of uneven dirt roads to Oklahoma City.
The same was true of New Mexico and Arizona, which were both admitted to the union in
1912, scarcely fourteen years before construction of Route 66. Use of the new road in
these remote desert states was sporadic. In 1925 New Mexico's Office of the State Engineer
reported an average daily use of only 207 cars between Albuquerque and Gallup. Although
Arizona reported a slightly higher daily count of 338 cars, road conditions left much to
be desired. The section between Ashfork and Seligman was described in the summer of 1925
as "Unimproved except in the way of removing boulders from the road that might menace
a low- clearance car . . . it is a twenty-mile (per hour) road." Despite these
obvious short-comings, the extension of U.S. Highway 66 into these desolate western
territories helped facilitate their transition from territory to statehood by offering
greater access to prospective residents and travelers.
FORMATIVE YEARS: 1926 - 1932
Route 66 was a highway spawned by the demands of a rapidly changing America. Contrasted
with the Lincoln, the Dixie, and other highways of its day, Route 66 did not follow a
traditionally linear course. Its diagonal course linked hundreds of predominantly rural
communities in Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas to Chicago; thus enabling farmers to
transport grain and produce for redistribution. The diagonal configuration of Route 66 was
particularly significant to the trucking industry, which by 1930 had come to rival the
railroad for preeminence in the American shipping industry. The abbreviated route between
Chicago and the Pacific coast traversed essentially flat prairie lands and enjoyed a more
temperate climate than northern highways, which made it especially appealing to truckers.
The Illinois Motor Vehicles Division reported that between Chicago and St. Louis trucks
increased from approximately 1,500 per day in 1931 to 7,500 per day a decade later, 25% of
which were "large tractor-truck, semi-trailer outfits." It was the intent of
highway designers to make Route 66 "modern" in every sense of the term. State
engineers worked to reduce the number of curves, widen lanes, and ensure all-weather
capability. Until 1933 the responsibility to improve existing highways fell almost
exclusively to the individual states. The more assertive and financially prepared states
met the challenge. Initial improvements cost state agencies an estimated $22,000 per mile.
In 1929 Illinois boasted approximately 7,500 miles of paved roads, including all of its
portion of U.S. Highway 66. A Texaco road report published that same year noted the route
fully concreted in Kansas, 66% paved in Missouri, and 25% improved in Oklahoma. In
contrast, the 1,2OO-mile western stretch (with the exception of California's metropolitan
areas) never saw a cement mixer. Until the height of the Great Depression, Texas, New
Mexico, Arizona, and the desert communities of southeast California collectively totaled
only 64.1 miles of surfaced highway along Route 66.
DEPRESSION AND THE WAR: 1933 - 1945
Washington's increased level of commitment began with the Great Depression and the
national appeal for emergency federal relief measures. In his famous social commentary,
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck proclaimed U.S. Highway 66 the "Mother
Road." Steinbeck's classic 1939 novel, combined with the 1940 film recreation of the
epic odyssey, served to immortalize Route 66 in the American consciousness. An estimated
210,000 people migrated to California to escape the despair of the Dust Bowl. Certainly in
the minds of those who endured that particularly painful experience, and in the view of
generations of children to whom they recounted their story, Route 66 symbolized the
"road to opportunity." Contemporary writers have reexamined the Great Depression
years and found that thousands of disillusioned immigrants returned home within months
after reaching the Golden State. Of the more than 200,000 refugees who journeyed west to
California beginning in the early 1930s "less than 16,000 people from the Dust Bowl
proper ended up in California." Despite popular perceptions promoted in Steinbeck's
novel, James Gregory argues convincingly that barely 8% of the "dust bowlers"
who set out for California remained there (Gregory 1989). In fact, California's total
demographic growth between 1930 and 1940 reflected scarcely more than a 22% increase
(compared to a 53% growth rate in the following decade).
While the importance of Route 66 to emigrating "Dust Bowlers" during the
depression years has been widely publicized. less is known about the importance of the
highway to those who opted to eke out their living within the devastated economies of
Kansas, Oklahoma, West Texas, and New Mexico. During this time, U.S. Highway 66 and other
major roads in America were integrally linked to President Roosevelt's revolutionary New
Deal program for work relief and economic recovery. Road improvements and maintenance work
was a central feature of the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Works
Project Administration (WPA) programs. Erom 1933 to 1938 thousands of unemployed male
youths from virtually every state were put to work as laborers on road gangs. As a result
of this monumental effort, the Chicago-to-Los Angeles highway was reported as
"continuously paved" in 1938. In the final analysis, Route 66 affected more
Americans on federal work relief than people who used it during the famous exodus to
California.
Completion of the highway's all-weather capability on the eve of World War II was
particularly significant to the nation's war effort. The experience of a young Army
captain, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who found his command bogged down in spring mud near Ft.
Riley, Kansas, while on a coast-to-coast maneuver, left an indelible impression. The War
Department needed improved highways for rapid mobilization during wartime and to promote
national defense during peacetime. At the outset of American involvement in World war II,
the war Department singled out the West as ideal for military training bases in part
because of its geographic isolation and especially because it offered consistently dry
weather for air and field maneuvers. In keeping with this policy, over $230 million was
invested in new military bases in Arizona alone. Several military installations Ft.
Leonard Wood in Missouri, Ft. Wingate Ordnance Depot in New Mexico, Navajo Ordnance Depot
in Arizona, and Edwards Air Force Base in California were established on or near Route 66.
America's mobilization for war after Pearl Harbor underscored the necessity for a
systematic network of roads and highways. The War Department's expropriation of the
nation's railways left a transportation vacuum in the West that only the trucking industry
could fill. Automobile manufacturers suffered critical shortages of steel, glass, and
rubber during the war years, and plants in Detroit converted to the production of tanks,
aircraft engines, ordnance, and troop transports. According to one government source, the
number of new cars produced dropped from 3.7 million in 1941 to 610 in 1943, all of which
were rationed.
At the same time trucks capable of hauling loads in excess of 30,000 pounds were
produced in sufficient quantity to keep pace with wartime demands. Studies by the Public
Roads Administration (PRA) during 1941 to 1943 showed that at least 50% of all
defense-related material destined for America's war production plants was transported and
delivered by truck rather than by rail. As the shortest corridor between the west coast
and the industrial heartland beyond Chicago, it was not uncommon to see mile-long convoys
moving troops and supplies from one military reservation to another along U.S. Highway 66.
Route 66 helped to facilitate the single greatest wartime manpower mobilization in the
history of the nation. Between 1941 and 1945 the government invested approximately $70
billion in capital projects throughout California, a large portion of which were in the
Los Angeles-San Diego area. This enormous capital outlay served to underwrite entirely new
industries that created thousands of civilian jobs. By 1942, however, available local
labor in most areas of the Pacific Coast had been exhausted, which sent war contractors on
a frantic search for skilled and unskilled workers from across the United States. Under
the provisions of the West Coast Manpower Plan, initiated in September 1943, contractors
prepared to offer jobs to 500,000 men and women to meet the production demands of global
war. In February 1942 PRA Commissioner Thomas MacDonald announced that only a small
fraction of the 10 million workers required to man the defense plants could possibly be
accommodated by the existing rail and bus transit facilities. The rest would have to move
in private automobiles.
They moved in unprecedented numbers. The net result of this mass migration was the loss
of more than 1 million people from the metropolitan northeast between 1940 and 1943. Three
Pacific Coast states California, Oregon, and Washington increased 38.9% in population
(measured against a national average of 8.7%).
POSTWAR YEARS: 1945 - 1960
The social dislocation and uprooting of millions of Americans that began during the
Great Depression and continued through World War II did not abate with the surrender of
Germany and Japan. After the war Americans were more mobile than ever before. Thousands of
soldiers, sailors, and airmen who received military training in California, Arizona, New
Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas abandoned the harsh winters of Chicago, New York City, and
Boston for the "barbecue culture" of the Southwest and the West. Again, for
many, Route 66 facilitated their relocation.
One such emigrant was Robert William Troup, Jr., of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Bobby
Troup, former pianist with the Tommy Dorsey band and ex-Marine captain, penned a lyrical
road map of the now famous cross-country road in which the words, "get your kicks on
Route 66" became a catch phrase for countless motorists who moved back and forth
between Chicago and the Pacific Coast. One scholar likened the popular recording released
in 1946 by Nat King Cole one week after Troup's arrival in Los Angeles to "a
cartographic ballad." No doubt Bobby Troup's musical rendition provided a convenient
mental road map for those who followed him west.
It was during the postwar decades that the population shift from "snow belt"
to "sunbelt" reached its zenith. Census figures for these years revealed
population growth along Route 66 ranged from 40% in New Mexico to 74% in Arizona. Because
of the great influx of people during the war years. California claimed over half of the
total population of the West between 1950 and 1980. The Golden State attracted over 3
million new residents in the 1960s and an additional 2 million in the 1970s. Based on the
census for 1980, "California displayed the most rapid and sizable population
development in the industrialized world in the forty years following World War II."
Los Angeles and San Diego rivaled New York and Philadelphia as America's most rapidly
growing cities. The demographic disruption that began in the 1930s stimulated
opportunities for roadside commerce. Store owners, motel managers, and gas station
attendants recognized early on that even the poorest travelers required food, automobile
maintenance, and adequate lodging. Just as New Deal work relief programs provided
employment with the construction and the maintenance of Route 66, the appearance of
countless tourist courts. garages, and diners promised sustained economic growth after the
road's completion. If military use of the highway during wartime ensured the early success
of roadside businesses, the demands of the new tourism industry in the postwar decades
gave rise to modern facilities that guaranteed long-term prosperity. The evolution of
these facilities is well represented in the roadside architecture along U.S. Highway 66.
For example, most Americans who drove the route did not stay in hotels; they preferred the
accommodations that emerged from automobile travel motels. Motels evolved from earlier
features of the American roadside such as the auto camp and the tourist home. The auto
camp developed as townspeople along Route 66 roped off spaces in which travelers could
camp for the night. Camp supervisors some of whom were employed by the various states
provided water, fuel wood, privies or flush toilets, showers, and laundry facilities free
of charge. Camp Joy near Lebanon, Missouri, and Red Arrow Campground in Thoreau, New
Mexico, are examples of auto camps that have survived to the present day. The successor to
the auto camp was the tourist home, which provided many of the same amenities but with the
added feature of indoor lodging in the event of inclement weather.
The natural outgrowth of the auto camp and tourist home was the cabin camp (sometimes
called cottages) that offered minimal comfort at affordable prices. Many of these cottages
are still in operation; among the better known examples is John's Modern Cabins in
Arlington, Missouri. Eventually, auto camps and cabin camps gave way to motor courts in
which all of the rooms were under a single roof. Motor courts offered additional amenities
such as adjoining restaurants, souvenir shops and swimming pools. An estimated 30,000
motor courts/motels were in operation along the nation's many highways in 1948. Among the
more famous still associated with Route 66 are the El Vado and Zia Motor Lodge in
Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the Coral Court in St. Louis, Missouri.
In the early years of Route 66, service station prototypes were developed regionally
through experimentation, and then were adopted universally across the country. Buildings
were distinctive as gas stations, yet clearly associated with a particular petroleum
company. Most evolved from the simplest filling station concept a house with one or two
service pumps in front and then became more elaborate, with service bays and tire outlets.
Among the most outstanding examples of the evolution of gas stations along Route 66 are
Soulsby's Shell Station in Mount Olive, lllinois; Bob Audette's gas station complex in
Barton, New Mexico; and the Tower Fina Station in Shamrock, Texas.
Route 66 and many points of interest along the way were familiar landmarks by the time
a new generation of postwar motorists hit the road in the 1960s. Many drew upon memories
from excursions with their parents. World War II transformed the American public from a
predominantly agricultural-industrial laboring class to an urban-technological society
with increasing leisure and recreational time. The American tourists' fondness for
automobile travel and their enjoyment of sightseeing made them ideal targets for the
service industries that cropped up along U.S. Highway 66. There was a growing fascination
with American Indian cultures, which became increasingly commercialized as public highways
penetrated once inaccessible reservations. This, coupled with the scenic, geologic,
prehistoric, and historic wonders protected by the national park system, lured countless
sightseers. To the average motorist, a trip down Route 66 was an adventure through
mainstream America accentuated by quaint Mom-and-Pop motels, all- night diners, garish
Indian curio shops, and far-too-infrequent restroom facilities.
DEMISE OF INTEREST
Excessive truck use during World War II and the comeback of the automobile industry
immediately following the war brought great pressure to bear on America's highways.
Automobile production jumped from just over 65,000 cars in 1945 to 3.9 million in 1948.
Meanwhile, the national highway system had deteriorated to an appalling condition.
Virtually all roads were functionally obsolete because of narrow pavements and antiquated
structural features that reduced carrying capacity.
Emergency road building measures developed during wartime left bridges and culverts
woefully inadequate for postwar needs. During the 1940s most bridges in Illinois and
Missouri used wood as a substitute for steel. Steel reinforcements were virtually
nonexistent in concrete pavement, and sporadic maintenance left U.S. 66 and other highways
riddled with potholes and gaping fissures.
The need for a modern system of national highways, while painfully obvious, was not a
novel idea. In February 1941 Thomas MacDonald, director of the Public Roads
Administration, told of the urgency for improved highways across the country in his
report, "Highway For the National Defense." MacDonald estimated that 78,000
miles of roads and highways vital to the war effort needed improvements. The director
estimated the cost for maintenance and repair to be $458 million. In anticipation of
postwar traffic needs, MacDonald proposed a transcontinental expressway not to exceed
40,000 miles, designed to connect all of the major metropolitan centers in the United
States. The Interregional Highway Committee, President Roosevelt's advisory group on
national defense highways, adopted the so-called MacDonald Plan with the recommendation
that $500 million be allocated over three years to implement the interstate highway
system. National defense priorities during the war, however, tabled MacDonald's proposal
until the surrender of Germany and Japan. The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1944 incorporated
both civilian and military highway needs into a single piece of legislation. In essence,
the act became the legal embodiment of the MacDonald Plan. The act preserved the idea of a
40,000-mile national system of interstate highways, but Congress failed to appropriate
funds specifically designated for its construction. Not until the 1950s, and the War
Department's prediction that the Korean Conflict was merely a prelude to a more widespread
involvement in Asia, did the dream of an interstate system of expressways linking all
regions of the United States become reality.
Ironically, the public lobby for rapid mobility and improved highways that gained Route
66 its enormous popularity in earlier decades also signaled its demise beginning in the
mid-1950s. Mass federal sponsorship for an interstate system of divided highways markedly
increased with Dwight D. Eisenhower's second term in the White House. General Eisenhower
had returned from Germany very impressed by the strategic value of Hitler's Autobahn.
"During World War II," he recalled later, "I saw the superlative system of
German national highways crossing that country and offering the possibility, often lacking
in the United States, to drive with speed and safety at the same time." Heightened
global tension hastened by the Cold War affirmed Eisenhower's resolve to improve the
defense capabilities of the nation's highways.
The congressional response to the president's commitment was the passage of the Federal
Aid Highway Act of 1956, which provided a comprehensive financial umbrella to underwrite
the cost of the national interstate and defense highway system. In accordance with the
terms of the legislation. the major segment of U.S. 66 running west from Oklahoma City,
the Texas Panhandle, New Mexico, northern Arizona, to Barstow, California, would be
replaced by Interstate 40. By 1960 each of the states along original U.S. 66 expended from
$14 million to $20 million to construct their portions of the interstate, which was
designed to accommodate 1975 traffic projections. The 1960s were perhaps the period of the
most comprehensive federal-state expenditures for the new interstate system.
By 1970 the remaining segments of original Route 66 were replaced by two, equally
modern four-lane highways Interstate 55 between Chicago and St. Louis and Interstate 44,
which absorbed the old diagonal section from St. Louis to Oklahoma City. On June 26, 1979,
the American Association of State Highways and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) accepted
the recommendation to eliminate the designation of Route 66. The committee noted that
"U.S. 66 markings no longer served as a through-state guide to tourists, but in fact
generated confusion because the route coincided with interstate designations over much of
its length." Many of the states along the route pledged to preserve some symbol of
the historic highway with signs reading "OId U.S. 66."
In many respects the physical remains of Route 66 mirror the evolution of highway
development in the United States from a rudimentary hodge-podge of state and county roads
to a federally subsidized complex of uniform, well-designed interstate expressways.
Various alignments, many of which are still detectable, illustrate the evolution of road
engineering from coexistence with the surrounding landscape to domination of it. One
outstanding example of the highway in its early form is the 3.5 mile section near Miami,
Oklahoma, estimated to have been constructed between 1919 and 1924. While many of the
original segments of Route 66 have been either abandoned or modified for secondary use,
modern improvements such as widened shoulders, adequate swales, gentler curves, resurfaced
pavement, and brightly painted safety stripes cannot keep the highway from becoming
obsolete.
Route 66 symbolized the renewed spirit of optimism that pervaded the country after
economic catastrophe and global war. U.S. Highway 66 linked a remote and under-populated
region with two vital 20th-century cities Chicago and Los Angeles. In doing so it etched
an imprint on America that bridged a once inhospitable frontier beginning a transformation
into an urban oasis. The automobile equipped with all of the modern conveniences of air-
conditioning and stereophonic sound provided relative comfort to millions of Americans
seeking greater social and economic mobility.
The outdated poorly maintained vestiges of U.S. Highway 66 succumbed to the interstate
system in October 1984 when the final section of the original road was replaced by
Interstate 40 at Williams Arizona. As the highway nears its 70th birthday in 1996, its
contribution to the region as well as the nation must be evaluated in the broader context
of American social and cultural history. The appearance of U.S. Highway 66 on the American
scene coincided with unparalleled economic strife and global instability that hastened the
most comprehensive westward movement in United States history. Like the early trails of
the late 19th century. Route 66 helped to spirit a second and perhaps more permanent mass
relocation of Americans. One indisputable result of its construction was the
transformation of the far west from a rural frontier to a metropolitan region.
Reprinted from:
Special Resource Study Route 66
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service (See Credits)
NPS D-4 July 1995.
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