Name: Why Route 66 became America’s most famous road
Uploaded: 2020-08-18T18:10:25.000Z
Duration: 17 min 42 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

“Hi. My name is Jean and I'm from France.

And last year I went on a trip in the West Coast, and

“Our trip was from LA to Chicago all the

way, taking the mother road, haha.” “We would stop at all the museums on the

way, we stopped at the one in Elk City, Oklahoma and we stood on top of the train.”

“I'm Fabian from Germany. Last year, I was visiting my family in California.

While driving on Route 66, I had to stop to take photos of the beautiful sunset.”

“The plan of the trip is to have no plan at all.”

“My husband and I went back and even visited Route 66 and Williams for our honeymoon.”

Why is Route 66 not only famous, but internationally

The road starts in Chicago, slides down the country,

Convert that distance to time and you get

a different story. In 1926, the road was commissioned.

By 1957, the Interstate Highway System began, and it bypassed the route by 1970. In 1985,

Route 66 was fully decommissioned. Route 66 has been in the shadows twice as

long as it was in the spotlight. But there's still this energy around it.

I talked to Ron Warnick, he's the editor of Route 66 News, which is an obsessive Route

66 site, and his articles just came alive with people reminiscing about Route 66.

“It was about Oklahoma Joes. It was this dive bar in Albuquerque near the University

of New Mexico campus. I put it out there, and pretty soon, all sorts of people were

exchanging their memories about the bar.”

It's got secrets, and surprises, and even a future.

The Big Texan Steak Ranch in Amarillo has

a challenge: eat 72 ounces of steak and sides, in under an hour, and you get it for free.

I am going to switch to phone mode here. Alright. Before you get to a cardiac arrest-threatening challenge

like this, you actually have to go back more than a hundred years.

Before Federal highways, networks of largely privately owned auto trails, like the ones

on this 1920 Rand McNally map, were standard. Look at the chaotic number of options in the

legend. As Federal highway funding laws were passed

in the 1910s and 1920s, new maps planned a linked highway system, like this one drafted

by World War I General John Pershing. This telegram from April 30, 1926, from Springfield,

Missouri established Route 66 (they initially wanted the nice round number of Route 60,

but settled for 66). Cyrus Avery is called the “father of Route

66” for helping create the highway to promote his home of Tulsa and creating the U.S. Highway

66 Association the next year. That connection from Chicago to Santa Monica

was always a weird shape, and less intuitive than a transcontinental road. But it had lobbying

interest behind it and a good starting point with existing roads.

Texaco rated road conditions in maps like this 1934 one. As the legend shows, Route

66 was just a graded road in parts, basically flattened dirt. Look at the journey from Amarillo

to Glenrio. There's still parts of Route 66 that look like this today. But they finished

paving the whole thing in 1937. To get all that work started in the 1920s,

the Route 66 association pushed stunts and did publicity that wouldn't have seemed

out of place in the 1950s and 60s. When a transcontinental footrace called the

“Bunion Derby” was run, the association made sure a big part of it took place on Route 66.

But it was struggle that initially made Route

“We're going to California, ain't we? Alright then, let's go to California.”

The Great Depression and Dust Bowl — a rut

of drought and erosion — sent families looking West for a better life.

Route 66 was perfectly designed to scoop them up, leading John Steinbeck to write that these

migrants “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.”

Though records show that highways 60 and 70 actually admitted more traffic to California,

Route 66 had become the iconic “mother road.” And then things really got going.

Okay, I have a slight wait before I dine alone, so there's time for activities.

That thing's terrifying. “Oh, it is.”

This boot's a metaphor for steak — and boots.

I feel like the only way to go mega-vi is to get that 72 ounce steak.

OK, see that big 66 on there? Amarillo, Texas, is a good example of a big

Route 66 town. They were already a transportation center.

This 1926 map — the year Route 66 started — shows Amarillo was a railroad hub.

After World War II ended, that existing commerce and Route 66 made it easy to add roadside

attractions. And it's still that way today.

Over time, Route 66 did this for towns a lot smaller than Amarillo, too.

This is the middle of the video, by the way. Right now. Yeah.

Carolyn was nice enough to be my tour guide.

“This is Ben's dad. And grandpa and me.”

“Out North of Town.” And she also showed me the Magnolia Gas Station,

which got started just before Route 66 became official. She actually helped restore the

space, including the second floor, where people used to live.

“OK.” “It's a filling station, but somebody

said at one time they also sold ice. I'm not too sure about that part.”

“The kitchen was green. The bedroom was blue. See, I hung pans up there so you'd

“Those pictures are neat because they show

the horses pulling the cars out of the water.”

To support all that travel and all those attractions,

Route 66 had a unique motel culture. Of course, even as it succeeded, Route 66

was limited by the prevailing prejudices of the time.

The Green Book was a traveling guide for black motorists to find safe lodging.

In Tucumcari, New Mexico, in 1960, listed options were scarce.

Route 66 made a culture, but it didn't change the existing one.

And in the 1960s, just as the Route 66 road trip hit its peak, the road was already being eclipsed.

Today, Glenrio, New Mexico is a ghost town.

After the Interstate Highway Act of 1956,

new, better funded interstates were built for defense and infrastructure.

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Why Route 66 became America’s most famous road

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coincidence

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