- There
has
been much written on the subject of Route 66 in the last two decades.
Much
of the material can be generally characterized as being popular in
nature.
With but a few notable exceptions (1),
all of this material has illustrated the subject of Route 66 without
providing
any intellectual underpinnings as to why Route 66 is worthy of actual
study.
-
The History of Route 66 is fairly easy to generalize. With the dawn of
the
bicycle and automobile age in this country at the turn of this century,
many
groups lobbied for the creation of roads which would be suitable for
bicycle
and automobile use. By the early 1920's most cities and urban areas had
paved
roads reaching towards their city limits, and not much further. Beyond
the
cities, the country was laced with local roads which connected one town
to
the next. There was no plan to roadway routing, and as there was little
revenue
for upkeep, the roads were usually in poor condition, unsuitable for
speedy,
mechanized traffic.
-
Largely through the agitation of Oklahoma's Cyrus Stevens Avery at the
San
Francisco meeting of the American Association of State Highway
Officials
in 1924 the groundwork was laid for the creation of a road running from
the
Midwest to the California coast (2).
This road
would become Route 66 in 1926. Route 66 was very unique in the federal
road
building experience for a number of reasons. First, Route 66 is not a
true
East-West road. In the highway designations set out by the federal
government
in 1926, even numbered highways were to run East and West, while odd
number
roads were North and South in orientation, with major East-West
highways
being numbered 10, 40, 60, 80 and so on. Route 66 runs northeast to
southwest
from Illinois to Oklahoma, then East-West from Oklahoma to California.
Second,
because Route 66 was initially created out of existing local roads, it
follows
a much earlier form of road layout and construction. The road follows
the
contours of the land, skirting hills, and other natural boundaries. The
grades
were gentle, and the road rarely straight, meandering across the
countryside.
Mileage and speed were problematic in that the road did not take the
most
direct route between two points, while curves tended to keep speeds
reduced.
In purely geographical terms, Route 66 was dominated by the
environment,
unlike modern highways which tend to dominate the landscapes through
which
they pass (3). Third, Route 66 was
an evolutionary
road. In some respects this fulfills the notion that Route 66 was a
true
route fluid in nature use and meaning, as opposed to a designated,
physically
defined highway. In general terms Route 66 had four generations: the
alignment
as assigned in 1926; the early improvements which straightened and
shortened
some distances; the first paved alignments of the 1930's through the
1950's;
and the bypass era beginning in the late 1950's with the advent of
I-40;
finally the re-discovery period wherein the unique nature of the
highway,
and its relationship with its environment is now being studied since
the
last bypass went into place in Williams, Arizona in 1984. This
re-discovery
has led to preservation activities on two fronts. The re-development of
Route
66 as an alternative travel route, with whatever economic benefits can
be
generated for the towns through which the old alignments pass, and the
more
stirring prospect before the National Park Service of "preserving" the
physical
remnants of a 2,400 mile stretch of road which has in many cases and
places
frozen history for historians and archaeologists of modern American
history.
(The Jackrabbit,
East
of Winslow, AZ. by the author 1994)
End notes:
(1) There
are
three publications that I would so classify: Rita A. Puzo's thesis Route 66: A Ghost Road Geography.,
California
State University, Fullerton, 1988; Michael Wurtz's early paper "Route 66: From Beale to Bypassed"., dated
February
1987 (NAU Special Collections and Archives); and the Kaibab National
Forest
National Register of Historic Places Nomination Report. For more
publications
on Route 66, see Route
66 for Researchers.
(2) Wallis,
Michael., Route 66: The Mother Road.,
St. Martin's
Press, New York, NY., 1990, p. 7
(3) While
Puzo
specifically speaks to Route 66 in its Mohave Desert setting, the
general
concepts regarding the integration of highway and environment apply
almost
universally in the case of Route 66. See pp. 3-7 for a lucid discussion
of
the topic.
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5/24/00 (some minor revisions, 9/05/01)
