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Route 66 History
Introduction
The history of this country has
included a number of periods of human migration. Shortly after its emergence from the War
of Independence, the new nation saw the steady outward drift of its people across the
Appalachians into the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys. Navigable rivers and foot trails and
military roads were the earliest transportation network. While some turnpikes leading to
and from burgeoning centers of trade were surfaced with gravel or "pounded
stone," most roads were improved only to the extent of removing stumps, boulders, and
other major irregularities. Most backwoods trails remained impassable to wheeled vehicles,
especially during the winter or subsequent spring thaws. For the most part, bridges were
nonexistent; early travelers forded smaller streams and crossed larger ones by ferry.
At the beginning of the 19th century
the first federal subsidies of roads and highways were granted. East of the Mississippi
River, postal roads and public thoroughfares like the Cumberland Road benefited from
limited government appropriations for construction and maintenance. Meanwhile, west of the
Mississippi, land-hungry settlers traveled wagon roads forged earlier by U.S. Army Corps
of Topographical Engineers. When Mexico ceded to the United States the vast western
territories from Texas to the Pacific Ocean, the great trails Santa Fe, Oregon, California
and Mormon made possible a mass westward movement of Americans in search of economic
prosperity and free land. A century later, the rut-filled corridors of the western
frontier yielded to the smooth-surfaced, all-weather highways of a highly urbanized,
postwar America. U.S. Highway 66 was one of several roads that hastened the continuous
flow of emigrants west during the most recent decades.
Americans assumed an identity as a
people on the move, constantly in hope of job opportunities and new beginnings. The trend
westward continued well into the present century. When the United States Bureau of Census
published its findings in 1980, it revealed for the first time that neither the
industrialized Northeast nor the agricultural Midwest were the nation's most populous
regions. Census figures for 1980 indicated that most Americans resided either west of the
Mississippi River or south of the Mason-Dixon Line. A decade later, the West,
traditionally a region of uninterrupted vistas and sparsely populated states, became
decidedly urban. The 1980 census showed that 78% of all westerners lived in metropolitan
areas (defined as major cities with populations in excess of 50,000 inhabitants). While
this demographic transition from snowbelt to sunbelt was in evidence as early as 1920, the
decades from 1930 to 1980 clearly marked a high point in the migration of thousands of
Americans.
Not since the great Oregon migrations
and California gold rush of the 1840s had the nation witnessed such a dramatic shift in
population from east to west. When contrasted with demographic figures for the 1940s and
1950s, however, the westward movement of the previous century pales in comparison. The
most obvious consequence of this major population influx to the West Coast was the
increase in metropolitan areas in the region, which clearly outpaced the remainder of the
United States. The West by 1980 added 39,121,000 metropolitan residents, or 1.4 times its
entire regional population in 1940. During the decades 1940 to 1980 the average size of
western metropolitan areas increased more rapidly than those in either the East or the
South. Moreover, while the western metropolis was substantially smaller than its eastern
counterparts in 1940, it was effectively equal in size by 1980. Whereas the metropolitan
West accounted for merely 9% of the nation's residents in 1940, it harbored 23% just four
decades later. In fact, 14 of the 20 American metropolitan areas with the largest
population increases since 1980 were west of the Mississippi River.
The urbanization of the 20th century
West resulted in no small measure from America's love affair with the automobile and the
longstanding belief of millions of enthusiastic motorists that the federal government
should underwrite the cost of a comprehensive network of all-weather, cross-country
highways. U.S. Highway 66 was one of only a handful of east-west corridors to appear early
in the 20th century as a result of federal and state partnerships. Still, the genesis of
one of America's most popular modern highways is rooted in the mid 1800s. Like the
primitive trails that tenuously linked the vast open spaces of the west to the population
centers of the East and Midwest, U.S. Highway 66 evolved from a government-sponsored wagon
road program initiated just before the Civil War. In the 1900s America's infatuation with
personal mobility brought forward the notion of an all-weather, surfaced highway
connecting Chicago to Los Angeles. Proponents joined a populist-based national cause known
as the "Good Roads Movement."
One response to the public outcry for
an ocean-to-ocean highway was U.S. Highway 66. What sets Route 66 apart from the other
roads that were absorbed into the body of national highways is (1) it was America's first
continuously paved link between Los Angeles and Chicago, gateway to the industrialized
Northeast, and (2) it (along with the segments of interstate highway that replaced it)
remains the shortest all-weather route between these two cities. To the average motorist
the importance of Route 66 was that it reduced cross-country travel between the Midwest
and the Pacific Coast by at least two hundred miles. Beginning at the corner of Jackson
Boulevard and Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Route 66 wound 2,400 miles across America to
Santa Monica, California. Its oiled surface etched a trail across the landscape by way of
St. Louis, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Albuquerque, Flagstaff, San Bernadino, and
Pasadena. Its broad, sweeping arch connected Illinois with Missouri, then sliced through
the agricultural Midwest, rolled across the Great Plains, and crossed the desert
Southwest.
To many Americans, Route 66 represents more than just an official highway.
According to cultural geographer Arthur Krim, it (Route 66) was the symbolic river of
America moving west in the auto age of the twentieth century. For others, the well
traveled public road was a commercial lifeline. From its inception in 1926, U.S. Highway
66 was designed to connect rural communities to their respective metropolitan capitals. In
so doing, gas stations, motels, "Mom and Pop" restaurants, and grocery stores
were built in the hope of servicing an increasingly mobile public. When bypasses and
interstate freeways were introduced in the 1960s to increase speed and reduce travel time,
the economic base stimulated by the appearance of Route 66 began to erode.
Route 66 is an excellent physical
illustration of the method by which the nation's highways evolved. There was a strong
government commitment to serve its citizens, who were becoming more dependent on highways
for their livelihoods. Although it is only one of several notable highways in America,
Route 66 is revered by hundreds of thousands of motorists as the model of the modern
American highway and the emerging automobile culture it serviced.
Text portions courtesy of the National
Park Service
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