by Mayté Rodríguez Cedillo & Fernando Favela
photos Courtesy The Quarto Group

On the morning of April 30, 1926, three highway officials crowded around a table at the Colonial Hotel in Springfield, Missouri. Outside, a Rotary convention was filling the city’s streets with energy. Inside, Cyrus Avery — Oklahoma businessman, oilman, and the man who would become known as the ‘Father of Route 66’ — sent a telegram to Washington, D.C. that would change America. The message was simple and consequential: the Chicago-to-Los Angeles highway would be numbered 66. In that moment, one of history’s great roads was born.

The Birth of a Number and a Dream
The United States of 1926 was a nation straining against its own geography. Automobiles were becoming affordable for ordinary Americans, but the roads connecting them remained a patchwork of mud tracks, gravel paths, and disconnected state routes. Congress responded with the Federal Highway Act of 1921, authorizing the creation of a numbered interstate system — and the race to claim those numbers began.

Cyrus Stevens Avery, serving on the federal board charged with designing the new system, had a vision: a road running from Chicago to Los Angeles through his adopted state of Oklahoma and the Southern Midwest, avoiding the treacherous peaks of the Rockies by cutting south through Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. When a dispute over the number 60 forced a compromise, Avery and Missouri engineer B.H. Piepmeier settled on 66 — a number that had a ring to it, a rhythm. They sent the telegram. The Bureau of Public Roads agreed. On November 11, 1926, U.S. Highway 66 was officially established.

The road ran 2,448 miles from the corner of Jackson Boulevard and Michigan Avenue in Chicago to Santa Monica, California — crossing eight states: Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. It wasn’t entirely paved. Only around 800 of those miles were asphalt; the rest was gravel, dirt, and wooden planks. Complete paving would take until 1938, when the infamous ‘Jericho Gap’ in Texas — the last dirt section — was finally sealed. The celebration was held in Amarillo.

The Mother Road: Dust Bowl and the Great Migration
Route 66’s first great test of purpose came not from tourism, but from tragedy. In the 1930s, a catastrophic combination of drought and poor farming practices turned the prairies of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and neighboring states into what became known as the Dust Bowl. Black blizzards of topsoil darkened skies as far east as New York. Crops failed. Banks foreclosed. Families with nothing left packed their belongings into jalopies and headed west.

More than 200,000 refugees followed Route 66 through the desert toward California, seeking farm work and a new beginning. They became known as ‘Okies,’ a term that carried both stigma and dignity. John Steinbeck traveled the road himself in 1937 and later immortalized their journey in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, where he gave Route 66 its most enduring name: the ‘Mother Road’ — ‘the mother road, the road of flight.’ That phrase, and the novel that carried it, would win the Pulitzer Prize and earn Steinbeck the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. Route 66 had become more than a highway. It had become a symbol of American resilience.

During World War II, the road shifted purpose again. Military convoys moved troops and equipment west toward Pacific bases. Defense workers flooded California. The highway’s strategic value was undeniable, and the government invested in its surface and capacity. By the war’s end, Route 66 was better than it had ever been — and the country was ready to drive it for pleasure.

The Golden Age: Neon, Drive-Ins, and the American Road Trip
The postwar decade transformed Route 66 into something unprecedented in human history: a pleasure road. The 1950s and early 1960s were the golden age of the Mother Road, when suburban families loaded station wagons, pointed west, and discovered that the journey itself was the destination. The highway sprouted a new American vernacular — teepee-shaped motels, frozen custard stands, reptile farms, drive-in restaurants, neon signs blazing against the desert night.

Meramec Caverns near St. Louis advertised on barn roofs. The Big Texan in Amarillo offered a free 72-ounce steak to anyone who could eat it in an hour. Wigwam motels let families sleep in concrete teepees. The Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari glowed pink and turquoise against New Mexico’s sky. First McDonald’s opened in San Bernardino. Cadillac Ranch — ten Cadillacs buried nose-down in the Texas Panhandle — became one of America’s most visited roadside art installations. Route 66 was not just a road; it was a traveling exhibition of American ingenuity, excess, and humor.

Popular culture amplified its myth. In 1946, Nat King Cole recorded ‘(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66,’ written by Bobby Troup after a real road trip. Chuck Berry covered it in 1961, then the Rolling Stones. From 1960 to 1964, the CBS television series Route 66 followed two young men in a Corvette through the American heartland. Route 66 had become the road of wanderlust, freedom, and self-discovery — not just for Americans, but for the world.

Decline, Decommissioning, and Rebirth
The very success of Route 66 contained the seeds of its decline. Traffic increased so dramatically that by the mid-1950s, the highway was straining under the weight of its own popularity. In 1956, President Eisenhower — who had been impressed by Germany’s Autobahn system during World War II — signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, authorizing a new Interstate Highway System of high-speed, limited-access superhighways. Five new interstates — I-55, I-44, I-40, I-15, and I-10 — would gradually consume Route 66, mile by mile, over the next three decades.

The displacement was brutal for communities that had built their economies around the Mother Road. As interstates bypassed small towns, the traffic — and the travelers — disappeared. Diners closed. Motels went dark. Signs rusted. In 1977, the highway ceased to exist in Illinois. California had removed its signs as early as 1964. The final blow came in October 1984, when the last original section — at Williams, Arizona — was bypassed by I-40. Residents in Williams, according to some accounts, were so distraught they reportedly confronted the construction crews. It availed them nothing. On June 27, 1985, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials formally decommissioned U.S. Route 66.

And yet. Almost immediately, Route 66 began its second life. What governments removed from official maps, travelers refused to abandon. Preservation organizations formed. States designated surviving segments as Historic Scenic Byways. The Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program launched in 1999 through the National Park Service. Motels were restored; diners reopened; neon signs were rewired. Today, approximately 85 percent of the original route remains drivable — marked by the iconic brown ‘Historic Route 66’ signs — and attracts millions of travelers annually from the United States, Europe, Asia, and beyond. Route 66, the road that America once abandoned, became the road the world came to find.

BAJATRAVELER® TAKEAWAY
Route 66 is the rare piece of infrastructure that transcended its function to become mythology. It carried Dust Bowl refugees, postwar families, and a century’s worth of dreamers — each one looking for something the open road alone could offer. At 100 years old, the Mother Road isn’t a relic. It’s a living archive of the American story, and driving it remains one of the most moving journeys a traveler can make.

Plan Your Route 66 Journey
READ THE BOOKS!
The centennial year 2026 is the definitive moment to drive the Mother Road. Events, monuments, and celebrations run the full length of the highway through November 11, 2026 — the official 100th birthday. For the national event calendar and centennial resources:
→ route66centennial.org | route66roadtrip.com | nps.gov/rt66