Route 66 is perhaps the most famous highway in the United States. Officially named U.S. Highway 66 in 1926, this nearly 2,500-mile (4,000-kilometer) road between Chicago and Los Angeles was one of the first paved highways. It crossed parts of Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
Route 66 linked small towns to larger cities and gave rise to a network of roadside motels, diners, and gas stations. The popularity of these enterprises helped cement the relationship between Americans and their cars.
In the 1930’s, hundreds of thousands of farmers traveled west on Route 66 to California to escape the “Dust Bowl,” a region of the southern Great Plains devastated by severe dust storms. John Steinbeck nicknamed Route 66 the “Mother Road” in his 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath. The novel vividly portrayed a Dust Bowl family’s hardships. After World War II (1939-1945), Route 66 came to symbolize postwar optimism and freedom, as thousands of returning soldiers and their families traveled west to forge new lives.
In the late 1950’s, Route 66 began to be replaced by interstate highways, which enabled motorists to travel faster. The last section of the original road was replaced by an interstate highway in 1984. Although no longer on current maps, parts of the road are still maintained and designated “Historic Route 66.”
