Rhys Martin is the manager of the Preserve Route 66 Initiative at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
If Congress were interested in undertaking constructive post-election work, it has an easy option: Honor Route 66. The famous strip from Chicago to Santa Monica, California, turns 100 on Wednesday, and since its creation in the early days of the automobile, the “Mother Road” has served as a symbol of the American Dream. It was the path of hope for migrants fleeing the devastation of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s and an important corridor for war supplies in the 1940s. By the 1960s, it was a cultural phenomenon, featuring in music and cinema.
The two-lane road eventually became a victim of its own success: More cars meant bigger roads were needed, which led to the route being supplanted by the Interstate Highway System in the mid-1980s. Instead of weaving through the countryside, the interstates terraformed the landscape to allow for straighter and wider lanes. Many sections of Route 66 were thus transformed into business loops or relegated to city streets, while others literally got buried under the modern roadway. Traffic slowed and businesses that relied on tourists closed. Local economies faltered and ran out of gas.
One such bypass, around Seligman, Arizona, hit the community so hard that a local barber raised his voice in protest. Once Angel Delgadillo saw how the town was suffering from a lack of tourists, he gathered business owners and lobbied the state to designate a stretch of the road as a historic highway. It worked. New signs went up on the interstate, encouraging travelers to take the off-ramp to see Historic Route 66.
All eight of the states along the road soon established their own nonprofit organizations dedicated to preserving and celebrating it. Michael Wallis’s “Route 66: The Mother Road” was published in 1990 as a love letter to the highway. As he wrote, it wasn’t merely the route’s attractions that merited a visit but the people one met along the way. That included Americans like Bob Waldmire, an Illinoian who became a beloved traveling artist, and Lucille Hamons, owner of a service station in Hydro, Oklahoma, whose hospitality earned her the nickname “the Mother of the Mother Road.”
In recent decades, the route has been waking back up, inviting both young and old to explore what middle America has to offer. Places like the Rockwood Motor Court in Springfield, Missouri, and the Osterman Gas Station in Peach Springs, Arizona, have been revived from near-ruin. Their appeal is simple. They offer visitors a slice of the nation from an earlier age. That’s old cars, vintage restaurants and authentic human encounters: conversations with the proud volunteer at a small-town museum or among guests in the odd motel courtyard at sunset.
It’s good news, then, that Congress is considering legislation that would turn Route 66 into a National Historic Trail, an effort so worthy that it has brought together such people as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California). The designation would task the interior secretary with creating a corridor management plan, elevating the road to a new level of national awareness. As a January report from the Kansas City Fed underscored, such coordination of route-based tourism can lead to significant economic development. An official designation would no doubt continue the route’s momentum.
People from all over the world take the road because doing so reveals the diversity of the United States and the connection between people, places and experiences across generations. They go for the regional staples: the piece of homemade pie at the MidPoint Café in Adrian, Texas, or the banter with the third-generation owner of the Cozy Dog Drive In in Springfield, Illinois. They go to take photos at the End of the Trail sign on the Santa Monica Pier or to see the rusty tow truck in Galena, Kansas, that served as an inspiration for Pixar’s Cars films.
The route, in many ways, is the story of America. It deserves to be recognized as such so that generations to come will experience the joy of discovering this country’s hidden gems.
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