Cruisin' Reunion

History and heritage gather along the Mother Road

- Michael Eckerson

John Steinbeck proclaimed U. S. Highway 66 the “Mother Road” in his classic 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath. With the 1940 film recreation of the epic odyssey, Route 66 was immortalized in the American consciousness.

It is estimated that 210,000 people trying to escape the conditions brought on by the Dust Bowl migrated to California. For those who endured that particularly painful experience, Route 66 symbolized the “road to opportunity.”

Legislation for public highways began in 1916, with revisions in 1921, but it was not until Congress enacted an even more comprehensive version of the Act in 1925 that the government executed its plan for national highway construction. The officially designated U.S. Highway 66 was assigned to the Chicago to Los Angeles route in the summer of 1926. With that designation came its acknowledgment as one of the nation’s principal east-west arteries.

From its inception, U.S. 66 was intended to connect rural and urban communities. Most small towns at that time had no prior access to a major national thoroughfare. Route 66 enabled farmers to transport grain and produce for redistribution. Route 66 diagonal layout was particularly significant to the trucking industry, which by 1930 had grown to rival the railroad in the American shipping industry.

From 1933 to 1938 thousands of unemployed men from virtually every state were hired as laborers to pave the final stretches of the road. As a result, the Chicago to Los Angeles highway was reported as “continuously paved” in 1938.