Route 66: Driving America's Most Famous Road

Route 66 exists on two levels simultaneously: as a physical road and as a mythology. The physical road — officially designated US Highway 66 on November 11, 1926, decommissioned as a federal highway on June 27, 1985 — is a 3,940km sequence of mostly two-lane asphalt running from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California, through eight states (Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California) and three time zones. The mythology — shaped by John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939), which called it "the Mother Road, the road of flight"; by Bobby Troup's 1946 song Get Your Kicks on Route 66; by the 1960s television series; and by decades of American cinema — is the mythology of westward movement, of escape, of the open road as the fundamental American freedom. What the road actually offers, to those who drive it with attention and patience, is something between these two levels: not the mythologised Mother Road, but a genuine cross-section of American history, landscape, and the specific melancholy of a country that builds things and then abandons them when something faster comes along.

The History: From Dustbowl Highway to Heritage Road

Route 66's original purpose was prosaic: to connect Chicago (the nation's railroad hub) to Los Angeles (the Pacific coast) with a continuous paved surface, replacing a patchwork of local roads. Its moment of historical significance came with the Dustbowl migration of the 1930s — when approximately 500,000 people (Steinbeck's "Okies," though they came from multiple states) fled the ecological catastrophe of the drought-ruined Great Plains for the promised agricultural work of California. They drove Route 66's length in overloaded jalopies, stopping at the tourist courts and filling stations and diners that had sprung up along the route since its designation. This migration — the largest internal displacement in American history to that point — gave the road its emotional weight.

The road was decommissioned when the Interstate Highway System — initiated by President Eisenhower's Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, modelled partly on the German Autobahn he'd experienced as Supreme Allied Commander — made its two-lane alignment obsolete. The Interstate bypassed towns that Route 66 had sustained; businesses that depended on through traffic collapsed within months of being bypassed. Communities along the route experienced rapid economic decline. The ghost towns and abandoned motels and derelict filling stations that are now the road's most compelling visual elements are, at their core, the evidence of this economic rupture.

Driving It: The Eight States

Illinois: Chicago to St. Louis

The route begins at the corner of Adams Street and Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago — a bronze plaque marks the start. The Illinois section passes through Springfield (Abraham Lincoln's home, the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is one of the finest presidential museums in the country) and crosses into Missouri at St. Louis, where the Gateway Arch — a 192m stainless steel parabolic arch on the Mississippi riverfront, designed by Eero Saarinen, completed 1965 — stands as the western boundary of the original frontier and the official symbol of westward expansion.

Oklahoma: The Mother Road State

Oklahoma has the longest surviving stretch of the original two-lane alignment and contains some of the road's most evocative survivals. Tulsa and Oklahoma City have well-preserved Route 66 districts; the small town of Stroud has the 1930s Rock Café (one of the genuine survivors, rebuilt after a 2008 fire); Elk City has the Route 66 Museum. The Oklahoma landscape — rolling red dirt plains giving way to the prairie — is genuinely beautiful in its flatness, particularly in the long light of late afternoon.

Texas: The Panhandle

Route 66's briefest state — only 178km across the Texas Panhandle — contains its most surreal landmark: Cadillac Ranch, outside Amarillo, where ten Cadillacs from model years 1949–1963 are buried nose-first in a wheat field at the same angle as the Great Pyramid of Giza (or so its creators, the art collective Ant Farm, claimed in 1974). The installation has been painted and repainted so many times by visitors that the Cadillacs are now barely recognisable beneath layers of spray paint. It is simultaneously ridiculous and magnificent — a genuine piece of American outsider conceptual art that happens to be free to visit, accessible from the interstate, and perpetually vandalisable by design.

New Mexico: The High Desert

Albuquerque's Central Avenue — the longest continuous stretch of Route 66 through a single city — passes through a landscape of vintage motels with their original neon signs (many recently restored), the Nob Hill district of independent shops and restaurants, and the Rio Grande Valley. Santa Fe (slightly north of the Route 66 alignment but essential) is the oldest state capital in the US (founded 1610), with a concentration of Native American and Spanish colonial art, architecture, and food that represents the most culturally distinct American city experience outside New Orleans.

Arizona: The Iconic Landscapes

Arizona is where Route 66 achieves its greatest visual power — the red rock landscape of the Colorado Plateau, the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park (the only US national park that Route 66 passes through), and the preserved two-lane sections through Winslow (immortalised by the Eagles' 1972 "Take It Easy": "Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona"), Holbrook, and the extraordinary Two Guns ghost town (a 1920s tourist attraction built around Apache Death Cave, abandoned since the 1970s, its crumbling zoo and trading post structures returning to the desert).

The most beautiful stretch of the original alignment: the 25km section from Peach Springs to Kingman through the Hualapai reservation — a narrow two-lane road through rolling juniper hills, completely unmodernised, with no commercial development, following the original 1926 alignment through a landscape that has changed very little in the past century.

The Ghost Towns: What Gets Left Behind

Route 66's ghost towns are not the product of some single catastrophe — each has its own story of bypass, drought, mine closure, or economic evolution. The most atmospheric:

• Amboy, California: Population approximately 4 (the owner and a few employees of Roy's Motel and Café, which has been intermittently operating since 1938). The surrounding Mojave Desert, the volcanic crater of Amboy Crater, and the surreal emptiness make Amboy one of the most photographically compelling stops on the entire route.
• Glenrio, Texas/New Mexico: A state-line town abandoned after the interstate bypass in 1975 — the Texas side and New Mexico side are separated by a rusted sign and both are completely empty. The old filling station, motel, and café are returning to dust in the wind.
• Meteor City, Arizona: A trading post near Meteor Crater (the best-preserved meteorite impact crater in the world, 1.2km diameter, 50,000 years old) — the trading post is closed, but the crater is open and genuinely astonishing.

The End: Santa Monica Pier

Route 66 terminates (or begins, if you drive east) at the Santa Monica Pier on the Pacific Ocean — a sign marks the official end, and the Pacific is the visual payoff: after 3,940km of continent, here is the water. The pier itself, built in 1909 and featuring a Ferris wheel, an aquarium, and the permanent carnival energy of the Los Angeles beachfront, is the anti-climax that every great journey deserves. No ending is sufficient for the road itself.

Practical Information

• Direction: West (Chicago to LA) is traditional and puts the setting sun ahead of you in the western states — better for photography. East (LA to Chicago) puts the rising sun in your eyes across the desert.
• Duration: 10–14 days minimum for a meaningful drive; 3 weeks is better. The temptation to rush is the route's greatest enemy — the best experiences require stopping.
• Navigation: The National Historic Route 66 Federation's maps and the EZ66 Guide (by Jerry McClanahan) are the essential navigation tools. Google Maps will route you to the interstate — ignore it.
• Accommodation: Wherever possible, stay in the original motels — not for comfort (they vary wildly) but for continuity. The Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari, New Mexico (1939, neon restored) and the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Arizona (sleep in a concrete teepee; opened 1950) are the legendary stays.

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