From Flagstaff we take the I-40 East, down through ponderosa forest into another long stretch of desert. For the first time we find ourselves driving the same route as the old Highway 66 - once the most traveled highway in America. Route 66, to be familiar, has been almost completely defunct since the 1980s, but for decades it was economic artery, cultural touchstone, and tourist trap all rolled into one. It wasn’t the first American highway, but it was the first American highway to actually stand a good chance of getting you where you wanted to go.
Pre-Route 66, if you wanted to drive any appreciable distance you had to grapple with the fact that something was almost certainly going to go wrong. Through the 1920s, states took care of building their own roads. They didn’t worry too much about drivers who might want to cross state lines - if you wanted to leave, say, Delaware, that was your problem. So for multi-state trips drivers relied on highways cobbled together by “trail associations,” private organizations that did little of their own roadbuilding, but who connected and improved existing state roads. These trail associations made money by charging a fee to the businesses, towns, cities and counties that their routes passed through. In exchange, they did road maintenance (sometimes), put up signage, and published travel guides that emphasized local attractions.
They also gave their routes names. Glorious, evocative, incredibly confusing names. King of Trails Highway sounds wonderful, for example, but where does it go? (From Winnipeg to Brownsville, naturally).
But the larger problems were first that these proto-highways went where the money was, not where travelers needed to go; and second that because there was no central authority, the routes tended to get snarled up, or fall into disrepair, or double over each other. Even the most famous of the old trail association routes, the Lincoln Highway from New York to San Francisco, was plagued by lengthy unpaved stretches and unreliable bridges. Per highway historian Richard F. Weingroff:
At a time when a service infrastructure to support the automobile did not exist, the [Lincoln Highway Official Road Guide] urged motorists to buy gasoline at every opportunity, no matter how little had been used since the last purchase. Motorists were advised to wade through water before fording it with their vehicle and to avoid drinking alkali water ("Serious cramps result"). Firearms weren't needed, but full camping equipment was, especially west of Omaha, Nebraska. The guide advised motorists to select camp sites early ("If you wait until dark you may be unable to find a spot free from rocks"). Equipment needed included chains, a shovel (medium size), axe, jacks, tire casings and inner tubes, a set of tools, and, of course, 1 pair of Lincoln Highway Pennants. In view of the mud the motorist could expect to travel through, the guide offered one bit of practical advice without further comment: "Don't wear new shoes."
As the motorist approached Fish Springs, Utah, he could take comfort in the guide's advice: If trouble is experienced, build a sagebrush fire. Mr. Thomas will come with a team. He can see you 20 miles off.
Eventually the federal government created a Joint Board on Interstate Highways to sort everything out. The Board swept away the colorful jumble of names put in place by the associations, and decreed a (very) irregular grid of routes, each represented by a two digit number. Horizontal routes would be represented by even numbers, vertical routes by odd; the route numbers would increase moving from north to south and from east to west; and numbers ending in zero or five would be reserved for the most important of the new highways. There were two irregularities: the Board would not accept a Route Zero, and so the northernmost highway was designated Highway 2. And, it turned out that we needed one more highway than planned to cover the country’s west coast - thus Highway 101, which is meant to be a sort of cheat on the two digit principle: ten-one.
While this new degree of clarity was mostly welcome, at least one observer, Ernest Gaffney of the Automobile Club of Southern California, regretted the loss of the old, evocative names:
…while we're at it, he wondered, why pause in such a laudable campaign for efficiency. Why not number our Presidents ("let George Washington hereafter be known as No. 1"), our Senators ("numbered according to seniority, with a judicious sprinkling in of ciphers where necessary"), our Supreme Court justices, our rivers, our mountains, our States, our Governors, our Mayors, and certainly our oceans (No. 1 and No. 2)?
But this objection was ignored, and the new system adopted.
You will notice something is off here - the major routes were meant to end in a zero or a five, but the best-known highway to come out of the whole process ended, of course, in a six. This was due to a Board member named Cyrus Avery. Avery had been involved in a number of the trail associations, and his idea was for at least one of the new federal highways to act as a kind of supercharged version of the old trail association routes - that is it would combine the objective of getting travelers to where they wanted to go in a reasonably efficient manner, with the idea of the highway as an economic lifeline for the communities it passed through - and it would have boosters in those communities who would raise funds to get the highway paved (this was expensive and a big deal) and keep it maintained.
Avery and his allies had the perfect route in mind: starting in Chicago and running to Los Angeles via the Southwest. The road would connect two powerhouse cities, be incredibly scenic, and run through hundreds of towns both big and small (it would also pass through Avery’s adopted home state of Oklahoma - no small consideration). It would certainly be major, and given its placement on the map would be a natural fit for the designation Highway 60.
The problem, however, was that the proposed road did not pass through Kentucky, and the Governor of Kentucky had a lot of sway with the Board, and had noticed that not a single highway ending in zero was expected to pass through his bluegrass state. It was unjust. A road passing through Kentucky must end in zero, it was imperative, and the force of this argument was so powerful that the numeral sixty was wrested away from Avery and given to a Kentucky-inclusive route. This left Avery to choose from either 62 or 66, minor numbers; he preferred 66.
Once the new federal highway system was announced, Avery and his network of boosters swung into action. Despite its lowly name Route 66 was the first highway to be fully paved, and by far the most promoted. The newly formed National US 66 Highway Association put up billboards, bought ad space in newspapers and magazines; they sponsored a footrace from Los Angeles to New York in honor of the new road, which did not make a lot of sense since the road did not go from Los Angeles to New York, but which became a press sensation, the Bunion Derby, won by a charismatic farm boy from Foyil, Oklahoma named Andy Payne.
And so Route 66, paved, placarded, and promoted, stood ready as America entered into an exceptionally mobile era. In the 1930s the Dust Bowl chased migrants west; then the Dust Bowl cleared up and the migrants came back east. In the 1940s global war sucked a good portion of the American labor supply into the West’s army bases, naval bases, munitions factories, and shipyards. Then came the fifties, the rise of the middle class, the birth of mass tourism. Disneyland opened. Route 66 boomed.
The road became a cultural touchstone. The Joads, fleeing west in The Grapes of Wrath, follow Route 66:
Highway 66 is the main migrant road. 66—the long concrete path across the country, waving gently up and down on the map, from the Mississippi to Bakersfield—over the red lands and the gray lands, twisting up into the mountains, crossing the Divide and down into the bright and terrible desert, and across the desert to the mountains again, and into the rich California valleys.
66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert’s slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.
In 1946 Bobby Troup wrote “(Get Your Kicks) on Route 66”. The exact nature of the kicks are never specified, but the song lists off towns along the road from east to west - Winona, just to the east of Flagstaff, a town we are about to drive through (we’re still driving, remember?) is the only place listed out of order: Flagstaff, Arizona / Don't forget Winona. Nat King Cole covered the song and made it a hit. Later, after the highway’s decline had already begun, a TV series named Route 66 was produced, following two young men on peripatetic adventures across the US - although oddly they rarely visited the actual road the show is named after, and the finale takes place not in Los Angeles at the end of their putative route, but in Tampa Bay, Florida.
The experiences of millions of drivers going up and down Route 66 also helped forge the idea of driving as a way to take in a certain bonkers essence of the American soul, in all its chintz, flair, and eccentricity. Route 66, despite its formal designation, was not very highway-like, at least according to modern standards. It was four lanes at its widest, and usually two, and it didn’t have on-ramps and off-ramps, or clover exchanges, or elevated sections. It was usually just a busy road passing through a town. And so the towns it passed through could get right up close. If you wanted to try to make a buck off of the tourists on Route 66 you just needed to buy a patch of land, throw up a sign, and start doing… whatever.
A list of roadside attractions along Route 66, without context: The Mother Goose Pantry, Grand Canyon Caverns (nowhere near the Grand Canyon), Howdy Hank’s, the Blue Whale, the Regal Reptile Ranch, Mahan’s Hulaville, The World’s Largest Totem Pole, Historical Largest Catsup Bottle in the World, Round Barn.
Not everyone was welcome. Route 66 was busiest in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and the communities along it shared in the explicit racism practiced by most white Americans during that period. Many attractions were whites-only (one, the Fantastic Caverns, was actually run by the Ku Klux Klan for a period); so too were the motels and restaurants. As Candacy Taylor writes in the Atlantic:
…black Americans also couldn’t eat, sleep, or even get gas at most white-owned businesses. To avoid the humiliation of being turned away, they often traveled with portable toilets, bedding, gas cans, and ice coolers. Even Coca-Cola machines had White Customers Only printed on them.
At the same time a very limited number of stops existed that did cater especially to Black or mixed race clientele. Taylor singles out several in her article: Graham’s Rib Station in Springfield, Missouri; the Threatt Filling Station in Luther, Oklahoma; De Anza Motor Lodge in Albuquerque. And then there was Murray’s Dude Ranch. Per Taylor:
This lost gem was billed as “The Only Negro Dude Ranch in the World”—which it very likely was. The 40-acre ranch was situated on the edge of the Mojave Desert, with Joshua, yucca, and mesquite trees dotting the landscape. A black couple, Nolie and Lela Murray, owned the property and offered black people traveling on Route 66 much-needed lodging and some good old-fashioned Western recreation. All manner of black and white celebrities visited, from Lena Horne and Joe Louis to Hedda Hopper and Clara Bow. Pearl Bailey ultimately bought the property in 1955 but sold it in the mid-1960s. Sadly, today there’s no physical evidence that Murray’s Dude Ranch ever existed.
Like many roadside attractions, the decline of Murray’s Ranch Ranch was tied to the decline of Route 66 itself. The road had never been very safe, and by the 1950s it was starting to fall apart. In 1956 the Eisenhower administration passed the Federal Aid Highway Act, which began the process of criss-crossing the continent with the broad, smooth, geographically indifferent highways that we drive down today. Having rung Route 66 in, Steinbeck rung it out with glum acceptance:
When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.
Arizona was the state that held on to the old road for the longest; the very last section of Route 66 to be decommissioned is just to the west of us, near Williams.
Adopting the more leisurely spirit of that earlier age of travel, we will cover only a little ground today. Following the I-40 we pass to the north of Winslow (the old Route 66 passed directly through it). If we had made our way into town, we could have visited Standin’ On the Corner Park, which commemorates Winslow’s appearance in the lyrics to the Eagles/Jackson Brown hit, Take it Easy: Well, I'm a-standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona and such a fine sight to see / It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford slowin' down to take a look at me. Winslow is not such a small town (about ten-thousand people), but it may be one of the smallest ever featured in the lyrics of a hit song. Not the smallest however, because that is clearly Luckenbach Texas. Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love) by Waylon Jennings reached number one on the country charts in 1977; at last census Luckenbach recorded a population of three.
From Winslow we continue east until we end our short drive at the old cowboy town of Holbrook.
Sources:
The Roots of Route 66, by Candacy Taylor
The Lincoln Highway, by Richard F. Weingroff
From Names to Numbers: The Origins of the U.S. Numbered Highway System, by Richard F. Weingroff
Route 66 The Mother Road, by Michael Wallis
Route 66 Remembered, by Michael Karl Witzel
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
Travels With Charley, by John Steinbeck