Route 66 as American History?:
A State of the Historiography and Bibliography of Route 66
Presented to the lunchtime meeting of University Career Women, Arizona State University West, October 24, 2002

    As such there is little wrong with the current collection of Route 66 publications. By all measures this is a growing and vibrant topic for publishers today.  These titles and articles are very user friendly items which non historians and historians alike can use to collect basic information about Route 66.  Some of the more thoughtful works do a workman-like job of trying to place Route 66 into the environment through which it passes, and make linkages to local and national historical events, although their bias to popular culture is clear and overt. What these works have left unanswered is whether a more thoughtful historical analysis of Route 66 is desirable- or perhaps even possible. The works to date for the most part do not position themselves as historical works generally, and largely present themselves for what they are- popular works on a specialized topic of interest for a wide variety of readers. Often these works reflect the specialized needs and interests of their authors, and not necessarily those of the researcher at large.

    There are questions we must ask about our (collective) relationship with Route 66⁽¹⁾. Was Route 66 simply a product of technology? Was it a  bellwether of the future? A symbol of American culture? Was it local history? Was it American History? The problem with the contemporary Route 66 writing and scholarship situation isn't simply one of ill defined books wherein the authors fail to follow through on their topic. Rather, all of these writers struggled with their topics and to some extent come to grips with it- that much is clear, and the results speak for themselves. Despite  80 book titles,  one magazine title, and countless articles in magazines and newspapers coming out over the last 15 years or so, the topic is yet to really be adequately researched.  The veritable explosion of Route 66 web sites confuses the issue further.  There are literally thousands of Web sites dealing with Route 66, some are from enthusiasts, and travelers, some come from other countries, some are scholarly and historical, many clue in on "selling" Route 66, but many draw their support and information from these print titles, and further enforce that particular reflection of Route 66 scholarship and publishing. At least for Arizona based publications and web sites, we can almost tick off in order those places and people that have to be included in those works.

    This problem is double-edged. Route 66 has traditionally been a symbol of popular culture. It has good representation in music, film and television, and recently has been used as an American icon to hawk goods ranging from jeans to salsa. The current embrace of Route 66 by the more popular press to some degree makes sense. It is traditional. The other edge of the issue revolves around the historians' rejection of Route 66 as an historical topic. This rejection occurs at two very fundamental levels. I think the first and most obvious involves perspective. Route 66 was a product and a casualty of the twentieth century. Can we fully understand the impact or effect of Route 66 when it existed officially (in part) as late as the 1980's? Does the fact that Route 66 could be seen as a stepping stone in a broader national transportation system doom it as a sort of a historical dead end? The danger in waiting for  perspective to develop is that the opportunity exists now to study Route 66 in the first person may evaporate. Many of the tangible examples of Route 66 carry on as do many of the personalities involved in its creation and exploitation, but perhaps not for long. One of the hallmarks of Route 66 and affiliated entities is the transience of it all. The road moved, and businesses and people moved with it. The likelihood of the tangible Route 66 surviving long into the future is by no means assured. Next we have to consider the issue of Route 66 as a popular culture phenomenon. Can a popular entity be studied as an historical event anymore than a film, personality or musical work?

    The fact is that virtually no new information regarding Route 66 has been produced despite the swell in titles demonstrating a clear cut need for a new way to assess what Route 66 was and is today. One method of looking at Route 66 is to take a more historically oriented approach that may move our understanding of Route 66 forward and provide some foundation for scholarship and research about  Route 66. There are even some good foundations to start with. Within the body of material published on Route 66 there are some notable exceptions which do not generally fit into the popular cultural or historical works category. First on this list are the more specialized yet still "popular" works.  Quinta Scott's work entitled "Along Route 66" certainly fall's into this category ⁽²⁾. Scott's book is an architectural study of  buildings along Route 66. As such it is a well defined work examining early 20th century roadside architecture, within the geographical limit of Route 66. Many of the federal and state publications on Route 66 also fall generally into this category. They have clear definition of purpose, and are limited to the highway's geography.  The second category of Route 66 works which fall beyond the popular marker are the academic pieces written over the last twenty years supporting graduate research ⁽³⁾. Beyond these however, one finds a mixture of what I have listed above- an array of works with relatively shallow historical content  of Route 66.

    Of late there have been a few articles, and now a book ⁽⁴⁾ which may seem to indicate one kind of trend. The authors of these works seem to attempt to embrace a more academic stance by trying to strip the romance from the road by showing the graphic reality of current or past Route 66 conditions, or reveal the darker aspects of the local histories of places along the road. Sub currents within these works include serious topics and issues including crime, poverty, racism, corruption, anti environmentalism, and more. These works may simply be attempting to "unpopularize" Route 66, or with the  inclusion of  darker historical themes, link Route 66 to broader events, and break it from its popular roots. The obvious question at this point is whether the non-romantic look at past or current conditions that these unflinching works embrace comprise an improvement over current Route 66 study, and if so, will this lead to the historical works we may be seeking, or is this some other sort of phenomenon?

History?
    There are many views on just what constitutes "History". Essentially History is the recorded past, and obviously there are many factors that affect just what gets incorporated into a culture's accepted historical record. If we reflect upon our own collective academic past, we usually find that studies in History were limited to what we call today "survey" classes or books. These classes or books feature broad strokes of history, covering large blocks of time, or incorporating large geographic space. Such history provides a good foundation from which the user can grasp the basic concepts of the past, and launch into deeper studies for more detailed evaluation of shorter time frames, tighter geographic areas, or even biographical sketches of individuals influential in that phase of the historical continuum.

    History can be further developed and explored to include counter or alternative views. Quite often history of this type incorporates minority views or perspectives, revisionist outlooks, or even some sort of post-modern interpretation.  History, however, is still shaped by the culture of those who write it and who or what it is about. This means is that "official" or accepted history (whether of a town, country, corporation, or even an individual) still must meet the limits of acceptability on the part of the whole (that is who will read and make use of this history). A case in point might be the rejection of Edmund Morris' recent work entitled Dutch : a Memoir of Ronald Reagan ⁽⁵⁾. Morris' prior works were largely accepted as solid scholarship, yet by novelizing the life of Reagan, and inserting the author as a character into the story, Morris' work was largely rejected as not being historically valid. In fact the biography's construction is what the book is remembered for, not what it concluded about its subject.

    All of this implies that History is not fixed. By its own nature History does change based upon the perspectives of new authors, new studies and information synthesis, the perspective developed with the passage of time, as well as discovery of new evidence and material.

Route 66 History
    Where does Route 66 fit in the historical continuum?  The first initial hurdle is to determine whether a subject like Route 66 is really a historical topic (as many Historians might argue against, classifying it instead as an icon of American or popular culture). "Popular" topics are often simply not seen as historically valid topics, yet as we know popular culture can uniquely define history as well as many other more "classic" tools. The body of Route 66 material at hand has produced a good ground work for future publications, especially with the volume of interview material already collected. If we examine Route 66 in historical terms, that is to say as a chronological, place driven entity, the history of Route 66 would begin to form up around some of the following broad topics:

• the establishment of the route of the road, and changes of that route over time;
• the processes, methods, and those responsible for road construction (which could draw upon local, state and federal politics of road building in general, and Route 66 in particular);
• the interaction between the road, automobile and truck technology, and traveler's needs; travel trends and their effects locally and nationally;
• interactions between Route 66 and other transportation systems (the Santa Fe Railroad for example);
• the opening of highways and federal financial support of highway projects, and;
• effects of the road on the areas through which it passed over time.

    Certainly Route 66 does embody something uniquely American in nature. It may be that this alone is the reason why it has been difficult for authors and writers to grasp and deal with this topic. The argument against the creation of a Route 66 historiography is strong. This is an entity less than a century old (and therefore hardly historic in some circles), and the hesitancy to to write the road's history is understandable given that it continues to exist in many place, and is on the verge of another sort of existence as a sanctioned "Historic Corridor".

    It may well be that for now, we are more comfortable in embracing Route 66 as some sort of cultural icon, than in producing (and reading and evaluating) scholarly works about the old road.  It is probable that even if a more historical methodology is not embraced by future writers of Route 66, that they will have to somehow alter the trends that Route 66 publication currently stay with. This shift in focus on Route 66 is not without peril. Would the "scholarization" of Route 66 damage its popularity, or merely build upon the enthusiasm that currently exists? Certainly the popular experiential allure of Route 66 will always inspire writers to try to explain that personal aspect of the road, but without some sort of historical foundation, these become experiences in a vacuum.