Route 66: Part 1 - The Beginning and the Milestones
In 2017 and 2018, we traveled the entirety of Route 66. First, we drove from Albuquerque to Santa Monica, then from Albuquerque to Chicago. We strongly encourage you to take this trip if you're interested in the roadside culture and history of the American road trip.
Route 66 began as one of America’s great experiments in connection. Officially established on November 11, 1926, the highway stretched about 2,500 miles from Chicago, Illinois, to Los Angeles, California, linking small towns, big cities, farm communities, desert outposts, and the western frontier into one continuous road. In its early years, much of the route was still dirt or gravel, but paving projects quickly turned it into a practical cross-country corridor; by 1931, Illinois, Kansas, and Missouri had fully paved their sections.
During the 1930s, Route 66 became far more than a highway. Dust Bowl migrants traveled west along it in search of work and stability, and John Steinbeck famously called it the “Mother Road” in The Grapes of Wrath. (That's where that name comes from!) In World War II, the road carried troops, supplies, and workers to military bases and defense plants, helping roadside towns grow around diners, gas stations, repair shops, and motor courts.
The road tied together Lake Michigan to the Pacific Ocean. Chicago and Springfield, IL; St. Louis and Joplin, MO; Tulsa and Oklahoma City, OK; Amarillo, TX; Tucumcari, Albuquerque, and Gallup, NM; Flagstaff and Kingman, AZ; and Amboy, Barstow, Ontario, and finally Santa Monica, CA.
The postwar decades brought Route 66 its golden age. Families embraced the open road, neon signs lit up motel strips, and Bobby Troup’s 1946 song “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” turned the highway into a pop-culture landmark. But the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act launched the Interstate Highway System, and faster freeways gradually bypassed the old route. By 1985, Route 66 was officially decommissioned as a U.S. Highway.
Yet Route 66 never really disappeared. Preservationists, local communities, and travelers helped revive it as “Historic Route 66,” celebrating its diners, motels, bridges, signs, and stories as pieces of American memory. Congress passed the Route 66 Study Act in 1990 and later created the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program in 1999 to support restoration efforts. As the road reaches its centennial in 2026, its first 100 years tell a story of movement, reinvention, nostalgia, and the enduring American desire to see what lies beyond the next bend.
Stay tuned for Part 2 in November!
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