History Route 66: what was it really like?

I was born in 1973, so all I know of Rt 66 is the nostalgic version we know today.

If you lived in a town on 66, Was it always called Route 66? Or would it have been more likely to call it Highway 66 or US 66? Was it recognized as different from other highways in its day, or have we exaggerated it's uniqueness?

Did people talk about it as the Mother Road in 1950, for instance, or was it just a road at that time?

 

I was there back in the day ,cruzing around in my Corvette with my best friend, helping out where ever we could. no wait ,that was a TV show ,never mind.

 

It was called US Highway 66 when opened in 1926. It was referred to as Rt. 66 back then, along with the Mother Road.

 

Here is a car show we do that does a virtual tour of old Rt. 66. like back in the day.

Waynesville MO, city park... It is pretty cool!
See you there... It's coming up soon! June 25th & 26th, 2016

http://www.oldride.com/events/9626740.html

 

I graduated high school in 1973. It ran through the middle of the little town in Missouri I grew up in and was called "Route 66".

 

If you go to the HAMB drags drive old 66 from Carthage to Webb City Mo. You get to see the Rt 66 drive in and some of the earliest parts of highway 66 it is marked.

 

A lot of two lane road. Went thru many towns that are extinct or near extinct. Some of the landmarks are being restored, which will give the newer generations something to see what it was like. I was fortunate that I started driving in 1968 and most of the US 66 was still intact. Living in SoCal, US 66 was still signed on freeways and streets in the LA and adjacent areas.

Now it is Interstate 40, and it avoids all the small towns, but at least there are markers for where Route 66 ran and can be driven.

I did the 66 fun run back in 04, which starts in Seligman, AZ. and runs to Topak/Golden Shores, Az. It runs every year on the first weekend of May. It may be something you might be interested in. One part of the run goes from Kingman, Az. to Oatman, Az., which is the really old US 66. The group stops there for lunch, and it is quite a town. From there, on to the finish line in Topak/Golden Shores. Prizes are given for various categories of vehicles (judged in Kingman the first day). Of course the Corvettes steal the show, and the prizes

 

Google is your friend - lots of information - try amazon.com for books & more

 

it was US Highway 66 but known as route 66. Before Eisenhower's Interstate system it was the first major highway from the Midwest to the coast. It was the highway that you could get on and not have to turn off of.

I never heard it called "The Mother Road" until this millennium that doesn't mean that no one called it that just that I never knew anyone who did.

It was never an important road for us, we lived in Nor Cal and Oregon mostly when I was growing up and traveled different roads.

 

I came across it in 1953 in the back seat of a '49 Studebaker. East coast to west coast. Remember getting in a speed trap in some podunk town. Old geezer in overalls running down the street behind us with a whistle. Had to go to the fire dept where the "judge" was sitting at a desk and pay the fine. Got up every morning before sunup and hit the road. The highway was littered with smashed rabbits from the night travelers. Super boring ride for a kid.

 

It didn't go coast to coast. Chi town to the Santa Monica Pier.

 

Close enough. Grand Rapids to Chicago, cross country to California. I guess when you're 12 you don't pay attention to details.

 

I imagine it was, like the cars we love, taken for granted in its day. It was a highway, not a national icon. I like choffmans41's story, and like PnB said, it was just a road that went somewhere. I spent a fair amount of time on it as a kid, sitting in the back seat of a 67 Cougar. I tried to sleep as much as possible. Had no idea I was doing something cool.

 

Williams, AZ in its path, neat place..Can pick up the Steam train ride up to the Grand Canyon South rim..

 

Born and raised in GA, so my route to the West was US80. It was coast to coast, from Savannah to San Diego. Traveled that road twice, as a hitchhiker! Both times were in the 50s, to visit my folks, who had moved to Sacramento. I stayed on 80 all the way to Phoenix and beyond both times, and past that, I went on routes that whoever I was riding with took, as long as I was headed in the general direction of Sacto. Took me 77 hrs. one time and 75 the next. I slept while riding, which I guess didn't please the drivers who prolly picked me up for someone to talk to while traveling rather than driving alone.
Always wanted to go back and run 66, but never did and I'm sure it's not the same, as all the old 2 lane routes around the rest of the country, and the towns they traveled thru have changed everywhere I've been since the Interstates were built.

 

We've done RT 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica. Last week we were in Seligman talking to the owner of the Copper Cart. She bemoaned the fact that very few Americans even know about RT 66 and if it weren't for the European tourists in their rented motor homes, business would go down the tubes. We have at least 20 books on the subject and far to many tourist trap items on display in our home! BTW, there's one of the better RT66 museums in Kingman AZ.

 

My family is from Oklahoma , were California transplants during WWll . we often returned to North Eastern Oklahoma for family reunions every memorial day or for family reasons,weddings / funerals etc. back in the 50's , 60's , Rte. 66 passed thru all the small towns , lot's of unusual looking motels with Tepees and Dinasours etc. Curio shops , and Howard Johnson Truck Stops , Whiting Bro.s and phillip 66 gas stations. back when you could get a single motel 6 room for under $10.00 , once we stopped in Grants New Mexico looking for a room and I went in with my Granny to the motel office and She asked how much for a room with two beds , the clerk told her $24.00 plus tax, She thru her arms up and said " I DON"T WANT TO BUY THE PLACE, JUST WANT A ROOM FOR THE NIGHT . we usually drove straight through, probably for that reason = save the money. there were Billboards along the way and Lots of Burma Shave signs , the Tourist Attraction signs said " Only 30 Minutes More " and I was finally old enough to take my turn driving , my Granny fidgeting in her seat asked to do a pee stop I would say " Only 30 minutes more Granny " she playfully slapped me . for the most part it was a long ,lonely two lane road . in the winter often Ice covered from Flagstaff all the way to El Reno before you could relax .in the summer watch out for tumble weeds and flash floods and many little crosses/memorials to those who died in horrific headon collisions . once on the will Rogers Turnpike during the Terrapin Migration there were turtles every where crossing the road, I will always remember those trips . Now Hwy 40 bypasses everything that was important to me as a kid.

 

LOL The lake does look like an ocean. Even if you are not a little guy.

 

It was bloody in this area. Terrible accidents and long lines of traffic backed up behind big trucks, slow vehicles and agricultural equipment. There are some great photo displays in the rest areas near Marshfield and Mount Vernon. I cross old Route 66 everyday going to and from work. Cuba, Missouri(25 miles east of me) has a restored motor court motel called the Wagon Wheel. There are many murals on the buildings as well. The intersection in the middle of town was said to be one of the bloodiest on Route 66. There were many fatalities there.

 

I hope to one day take the road, as much as is left, to Arizona where I have relative, who will probably be gone when I have the money to do this. I had a well travelled aunt, who settled in Flagstaff, who kept trying to get me out there.

 

There's some really neat stuff to see . I hope you get to do it.

 

My family used to travel on Rt. 66 back in the late 60's & early 70's quite often, near Santa Rosa, Tucumcari and Albuquerque NM to some property my family owned...it was always called '' 66 '' as we knew it....I distinctly remember how run-down the buildings were becoming and a sort of twilight zone area....like it was forgotten by time by the population in general, and few cars seemed forlorn passing by....buildings were becoming dilipadated and I always tended to think that people simply walked away from the area as a kid. Kind of sad as I remember those old buildings off the side of the road, and now long gone......glad people are recognizing it's unique place in history now.....it wasn't so much the highway itself and the pavement, but all the little mom-and-pop business' and small places that populated within the vicinity of route 66 just off the road itself....the interstate really put some small places 'on the shelf' with the promise of speed and wide lanes.

 

I grew up in Barstow, CA ('40's, '50's, and part of the 60's). It was just Main St., for us, as it was in so many other towns along the route. We called it Highway 66 heading either east or west of town. This picture shows the "Mother Road", as it was later known, in downtown Barstow. The big Standard station pumped more gas than any other station in the country for a few years back in this era - because all of the L.A. to Las Vegas traffic passed right through here before the freeways bypassed it. Highway 91 to Las Vegas began right at that intersection. I cruised this street almost every night as a teenager, never dreamed it would be so famous someday. (Sorry for the blurry photo)

 

A few pics from our cross country trip in 2005...

 

First trip on it was 1955 to go to the Disneyland opening. Long lines of cars, semis, no room to pass. Narrow road with not much of a shoulder. Any time there was a rise in elevation the road had several switchbacks with tight corners that were difficult to negotiate if a truck was coming from the other way. Many times you were crawling along because of traffic and turns. I remember seeing cars that had gone off the road stuck in rocks, they would just leave them there.

In the 90's I took what was left of it from Sedona to the CA border. For about an hour out there I had no cell phone service or radio reception and didn't see a car behind me or meet one coming at me. The first one I saw was a pickup and the guy did the howdy where your hand is on the top of the steering wheel and a finger (not the middle) goes up.

 

No kidding. Couldn't believe last year how many people from Europe and the Middle East come and rent motorhomes to travel on it.
I have still found some people up here don't know about it.

 

Just yesterday, I meet a family from Norway in Cuba, MO. enjoying the murals on old Rt. 66.

 

Its a curious thing to be looking at the road from first hand knowledge.

Yes the road was a big deal in terms of transportation and pre dating the crazy road systems we have now but many of the things that we now find cool about the road where fairly common place in its time.~ I would assume

It may have felt like any other road because at that time it was, the world has changed so massively that the road and it's gimmicks feel alien.

I often say that society and the world changes so quickly that if you ever wanted to talk to someone from a parallel universe or a time traveler you simply have a conversation with some one 15 years older than you are.

Think about that! 15 years is not a long time but how different was America in 2001?

 

That all being said I love all that road side stuff so any chance I have to slide over to 66 and see a giant man holding a 20 foot hot dog I do

 

I grew up two blocks from highway 66 in springfield mo back in the thirties, forties, fifties, sixties. Highway 66 then was just a two lane narrow, winding road that ran right through the center of every little town. It took forever to get anywhere. There was no speed limit back then. The highway signs just said reasonable and proper. No speeding tickets, just carless and reckless driving. Hours of ,driving forty miles an hour looking at nothing. A lot of missouri back then was open range so you had to watch for cattle on the road. Highway 44 was a blessing for southern missouri when it finnaly happened.