Route 66 – The Mother Road

After two years and our early exit from Australia, we are finally going to be travelling outside of the UK and on the road again, quite literally.

We are driving the legendary Route 66 from Chicago, Ilinois to Santa Monica, California covering a total distance of 2,448 miles.

Why is Route 66 so revered and iconic I hear you ask and why is it called the Mother Road? That is credited by some to John Steinbeck the American author who won the 1962 Nobel Prize for Literature. In his famous social commentary, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck proclaimed US 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.

Perhaps for many of us outside of the USA, it started later with Robert William (Bobby) Troup Jnr’s 1946 song Route 66 which was sung by many famous artists over the years including Chuck Berry but whatever the origins of the legend, it still holds a mystic as it did to Bobby Troup when he wrote the song on his drive along Route 66 to Los Angeles to try and make it as a musician and actor.

A short history is that in 1925, the US Government enacted a public highways act for national highway construction and the numerical designation 66 was officially assigned in 1926 to the Chicago to Los Angeles route. Route 66 was intended to connect the main streets of rural and urban communities along its course as most small towns in those days had no access to a major national thoroughfare.

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 pre-eminence 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.

By 1970, nearly all segments of original Route 66 were bypassed by a modern four-lane highway. The outdated, poorly maintained vestiges of US Highway 66 completely succumbed to the interstate system in October 1984 when the final section of the original road was bypassed by Interstate 40 at Williams, Arizona.

An interesting history and, whereas much of the original road has succumbed to the interstate road system, our route will be taking the same east to west trajectory and we will be visiting many relics and pecularities of Route 66 on our journey.

Our route will be as set out in red on the map above starting in Chicago and finishing in Los Angeles with the following stages:-

1. Chicago to Springfield, Illinois
2. Springfield to St Louis, Missouri
3. St Louis to Springfield, Missouri
4. Springfield to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
5. Oklahoma City to Amarillo, Texas
6. Amarillo to Santa Fe, New Mexico
7. Santa Fe to Albuqueque, New Mexico
8. Albuqueque to Monument Valley, Utah
9. Monument Valley to Winslow, Arizona
10. Winslow to Kingman, Arizona
11. Kingman to Los Angeles/Santa Monica, California

We will be staying for 1 night at some stages and 2 at others so that we can take in the local sights. Those sights include (1) making a vist to the Amish area around Arthur in Illinois which is the 5th largest Amish community in the USA, (2) a detour off Route 66 to Monument Valley on the Arizona/Utah borders to see the unusual rock formations and (3) a visit to the Hoover Dam as last time we were there we did not have enough time to visit the museum and go on the tour inside the dam.

You may wonder why we are not including Las Vegas in the trip. Las Vegas is not considered part of the original Route 66 and, having enjoyed its delights in 2018, do not feel the need to go back there like we do with the Hoover Dam that we visited from Las Vegas.

So fingers are crossed that the dreaded COVID will not put the kibosh on our travel plans this year as we have many trips planned in addition to this one.

Copyright 2022: John Cruse