After nearly fading into obscurity, Route 66 celebrates 90th birthday

Williams was a popular stop-over during the 60 years Route 66 passed through the town. The above photo shows the downtown area in the 1940s.

By Wendy Howell
Williams News

WILLIAMS, Ariz. — In several respects, the automobile was one of the most significant inventions of the twentieth century, but often overlooked and equally significant is the development of the roads those automobiles traveled upon.

Route 66 was not the first cross-country road nor is it the oldest road, but the highway has lodged itself into the imagination of travelers and became one of the best known and most identified roads in the world.
It was a highway created by the demands of a rapidly changing America. For some, it represents freedom of the road, to others a path to a better life. Route 66 celebrates its ninetieth birthday this month and despite being made obsolete obsolete by Interstate 40 in the 1980s, it remains a beloved icon and memory for many who traveled its path.

Creation

Route 66 was created in 1926 when the Bureau of Roads launched the nation’s first Federal highway system. It cobbled together and linked local, state and national roads. The U.S. Highway Association actively promoted the road and it quickly became popular as the shortest, most scenic route from Chicago to Los Angeles.

Many of the sections of Route 66 began as wagon roads and Native American trade routes from the Great Plains to coastal California. Several of these sections were natural routes across easy terrain and many were near water sources. Route 66 in northern Arizona utilized the Beale Road and the National Old Trails Highway in many sections.

Edward F. Beale, a retired Navy lieutenant, was chosen to chart a road across the southwest to open the area following the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848. Early railroad engineers also followed the Beale Road and towns and settlements soon grew up along the tracks and roads were created to link those towns’ main streets.

Despite the Beale Road, between 1863 and 1912, Arizona did not have much of a road system. As the automobile became popular in the early 1920s, road-building became important and a boom in road construction occurred throughout the state.

The Federal Aid Road Act, passed in 1916, gave money for The National Old Trails Highway across northern Arizona, which became part of the nation’s first system of Federal highways, eventually becoming part of U.S. Route 66 in 1926. Most of the 400 miles of the Old Trails Highway was not paved.

Early Years

The Federal Highway Act of 1921 mapped and provided signage to existing roads and during that time Highways Association President Cyrus Avery pushed for a road through Tulsa, Oklahoma that would originate in Chicago.

Most highways prior to Route 66 went east-west or north-south. Route 66 would be a diagonal route that linked several rural communities in the Midwest to Chicago. It became an important route for the trucking industry despite not being completely paved until the mid-1930s.

Depression

During the Great Depression (1929-1939), Route 66 became a popular route for thousands of hopeful Midwesterners trying to find their way to California to seek a better life.
Researchers estimate that 65 percent of America’s westbound traffic and 50 percent of eastbound traffic followed Route 66 during the 1930s. These seasoned travelers were largely dependent on camping for their overnight lodging.. The highway managed to keep several small towns alive during the Great Depression. It is estimated that 210,000 travelers came to California during the Depression years.

The plight of those stuck in the Great Depression was immortalized in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” in 1939. Many connected the plight of the people with the road itself.

Steinbeck’s referral to Route 66 as the “Mother Road” stuck and helped symbolize the route as the road to opportunity.

Wartime

In 1926, only 800 miles of designed Route 66 were paved. In the late 1930s, many unemployed youth found jobs as laborers on road gangs, and as a result of this monumental effort, the entire route was reported as continuously paved in 1938.

The completion of the paving was significant to the nation’s war effort during World War II. The country needed improved highways for rapid mobilization. The War Department utilized the west as a military training ground due to its wide-open isolation and dry weather.

The federal government put together $70 billion in capital projects in California, which created thousands of jobs in many entirely new industries. The resulting mass migration moved 1 million people from the northeast to California, Oregon and Washington between 1940 and 1943. The population increased almost 40 percent in those states.

Postwar

The economy improved near the end of the war and Americans began to take more vacations by automobile. Route 66 held many scenic wonders nearby, with Arizona offering attractions such as the Grand Canyon and Petrified Forest.

Following the war, soldiers, sailors, and other military men who had experienced California, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas during military training abandoned the harsh winters of the northeast for the sunny west. Route 66 facilitated their relocation.

One such former soldier was Robert William Troup, Jr., who traveled Route 66 following the war and penned the now famous tune “Get Your Kicks on Route 66,” which became a catch phrase for countless motorists who traveled the route between Chicago and the Pacific Coast.

Just as the New Deal provided employment on the road at the end of the Great Depression, numerous tourist courts, garages, gas stations and diners popped up and spurred economic growth after the road’s completion. The demands of this new tourism gave rise to competition among owners who used neon signs, gimmicks and over the top antics to draw travelers to their facilities.

Vacation

Travel increased following the war as rationing and travel restrictions were lifted. Automobile ownership grew dramatically over the next 10 years.

Tourist facilities evolved during this time with many travelers staying in motels. Motels evolved from auto camps. Auto camps developed as town residents roped off areas travelers could stay for the night. The owners would provide water, wood, toilets, showers and laundry facilities for the travelers.

Eventually, auto camps and cabin camps became motor courts where all the rooms were under a single roof. Motor courts offered additional amenities, such as adjoining restaurants, souvenir shops, and swimming pools.

Many other townspeople thrived with the development of service stations. Most buildings were unique but often associated with a gasoline company. Many expanded to include multiple pumps, service bays and tire repair.

During the 1960s, Route 66 was further immortalized with the television series, “Route 66,” starring Martin Milner and George Maharis. The show helped bring Americans back to the route looking for new adventure.

Demise

Postwar travel and the revival of the automobile industry took its toll on the condition of Route 66. In the mid-1950’s, support grew for a safer more reliable interstate system. It was further fueled by Dwight D. Eisenhower, who witnessed the strategic value of Germany’s Autobahn.

Congress responded to the president by passing the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which underwrote the cost of a national interstate system.

Due to this passage, nearly all segments of original Route 66 were bypassed in 1970 by a modern four-lane highway.

The crumbling and outdated remains of Route 66 completely fell out of the federal interstate system in October 1984, when the final section of the route was bypassed by Interstate 40 in Williams, Arizona.

Preservation

Route 66 was largely abandoned following the completion of the interstate system, although several stretches are still in use today. Several grassroots organizations spurred a resurgence of nostalgia for the old road and an effort is being made now to preserve what remains of the road and businesses of historic Route 66.

Dozens of cities along the old route have also found a niche by recreating what life was like on old Route 66.

Williams is one of those cities. Several retail stores, motels and restaurants cater to those seeking to rekindle their romance with the road.

Nearby Road Segments

Those seeking to experience Route 66 firsthand can find several sections of the road in the area. Pittman Valley to Parks has a portion of Route 66 that is well maintained and used regularly by local residents.

Several unmaintained road segments are located in the Ash Fork area. One section of Route 66 lies just north of I-40 and another lies southwest of Ash Fork. West of Ash Fork travelers can drive maintained Route 66 through Seligman, Peach Springs and end in Kingman.

Travelers can also drive Route 66 through the Williams Historic Business District and Urban Route 66 in downtown Williams, which were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 and 1989, respectively.

Victorville museum recreates era of Route 66

Crystal Yulujia checks her cowboy hat as she visits the California Route 66 Museum.

By Sam McManis
Sacramento Bee

VICTORVILLE – They were in their early 20s, hip in that effortless European way. He wore cool shades and a three-day stubble; she bore piercings in all the right places – lip, eyebrow, helix of the ear lobe. They said they were from Pamplona, Spain, but rolled their eyes at mention of the running of the bulls.

Too touristy, the gesture meant.

Yet Borja Marcos and Oihane Almagro were standing in front of one of the West's monuments to touristic diversions – the curio-besotted California Route 66 museum – snapping photos of each other before a giant mural.

All of which perhaps proves the theory that sneering locals just fail to appreciate what visitors embrace as noteworthy, exotic even.

"Route 66 is known well in Spain," Marcos says. "We were in Los Angeles, and we're going to Las Vegas. We wanted to stop."

Well, of course they did.

As Sharon Foster, the marketing director of the California Route 66 Museum in this low-rise San Bernardino County town, happily points out, more than 10,000 visitors a year grace the two-room shrine to a more quaint era of pre-freeway transportation.

"That's a lot of people for little old Victorville," she says.

Foster leads you over to a map of the world, where museumgoers are encouraged to plant a pin in their country of origin. The map is peppered with pins, giant clumps from Great Britain and Eastern Europe. And who knew a two-lane road that reached peak popularity in the 1950s could draw such a contingent from Tanzania and Kenya?

Two tourists from Curidiba, Brazil, Rui Caramori and Palo Rodriguez, are taking smartphone photos of a big blue Pepsi vending machine (10 cents), circa 1940, and ogling roadside billboards from back in the day. They, too, are on their way from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. They, too, just had to stop.

"It's famous," Caramori says. "Much (Route 66) merchandizing in Brazil."

Much merchandizing is on display in the museum, too. You can buy T-shirts, mugs and reproduced road signs – the usual stuff – and even a cool neon wall clock. But it's what's not for sale, the memorabilia, that makes this a must-stop.

Schmaltzy as it may sound, Route 66 once was the heartland of America – or at least one of its major arteries – running through eight states and opening the world of the great Southwest to East Coast city slickers. John Steinbeck, in "The Grapes of Wrath," called it the "Mother Road," leading Dust Bowl refugees from Oklahoma to California.

The road's charms were burnished by Hollywood in the early 1960s with a TV show, "Route 66," in which Martin Milner and George Maharis cruised in their Corvette convertible.

By the late 1960s, however, the interstate highway system was such that Route 66 became something of a sad frontage road, dotted by water towers and motels with missing letters.

People still travel on it. Some make it an annual pilgrimage. Others, like most of the tourists haunting the museum on one recent afternoon, simply take a detour off Interstate 15 and have a look-see.

To Victorvilleans, the museum is a point of pride. Volunteer docents acknowledge there is another museum up the road, the Barstow Route 66 "Mother Road" Museum, but they boast that the Victorville shrine was there first.

"Even as broken as the road is, as bad as the road is, I think it's the mystery of the road that draws people," Foster says. "To visit 2,248 miles, you see it all. (People) go through the plain states, the mountains, the desert to the beach. It's more than a road; you get to see the people element as you go through.

"I've found most of our (international tourists) actually want to travel the road. But we've made it so that everyone can see the kind of stuff exactly as you would've found (it) as you traveled along the road."

Stuff like old gas pumps, a re-created soda fountain diner, a tricked out, hippie/ flower power VW bus, a 1949 five-cup milkshake machine from Sparky's Drive-In in Victorville, old telegraph machines, phonographs, an eight-track tape player with Barry White's "Greatest Hits" cued up, and remnants from what once was a major roadside attraction, Mahan's Half Acre, in Hesperia.

Mahan's was something you won't find off a freeway exit these days. It was a folk-art space doubling as the home of the eccentric Miles Mahan. It featured everything from painted signs of hula girls to bottle trees and a miniature golf course, but closed after Mahan's death in 1997. The Hula Girl and Giant Cowboy wooden cutouts now grace the back walls of the Victorville museum.

Newer items make the biggest splash with the under 4-foot demographic: a bevy of bigger-than-life-size models from the movie "Cars."

The popularity of the 2006 Disney-Pixar computer-animated blockbuster jump-started interest in Route 66, Foster says. In the film, the road is home to "Radiator Springs," which was sadly neglected after construction of Interstate 40.

"Thank goodness, 'Cars' was regarding 66, because that did bring the younger group into us," Foster says. "But I'm the last generation that really traveled the road when it was the primary route getting to California.

"We've lost a generation, some of the late baby boomers, but hopefully, we'll make up for it when the kids want to bring Dad and Mom in here."


CALIFORNIA ROUTE 66 MUSEUM
Location: 16825 D St., Victorville
Phone: (760) 951-0436
Web: califrt66museum.org
Hours: 10 AM-4 PM Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; 11 AM-3 PM
Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday by appointment.