By Charly SHELTON

I traveled Route 66 from Chicago to Flagstaff in 2014 with my sister on her way home from college for the summer. We made it to Flagstaff and then turned south to visit my grandmother in Phoenix, leaving the northern part of the route in Arizona unfinished. We picked it up again at the California state line through to the end in Santa Monica so we could feel accomplished, but there was always that little bit we never saw. I just knew there were some hidden desert gems in that stretch. Well, I recently made my way out to Arizona and finished up that stretch and – wouldn’t you know it? – I was right.

Route 66, the Mother Road, Will Rogers Highway, the backbone of America, America’s main street, the longest small town in America – it has many names and affiliations. From 1926 when it was officially created to replace the National Old Trails Highway to the mid-1950s when the Interstate Highways Act sounded its death knell, Route 66 was the way to get anywhere across the country between Chicago and LA.

This road was actually in use long before it was paved and established in 1926, though. Part of what would later become U.S. 66 was established in 1857 as a wagon road for national defense movement and used camels to traverse the desert. Other areas were based on the National Old Trails Highway, the previous highway that covered some parts of the country. And other lengths of U.S. 66, like the Old Trails Highway, were based on Native American trade routes. Some of these, in turn, were based on buffalo trace paths when herds of buffalo picked out the best path across the Great Plains and used them so heavily and frequently that trails were blazed from the repeated footfalls of thundering hooves.

The history of Route 66 extends far into the past and comes to a rather abrupt stop in the mid-1970s when the last of the major sections of the Mother Road were bypassed by Interstate 40 across the desert of New Mexico, Arizona and California. In many cases, I-40 is only yards away from Route 66 which can be seen running as a frontage road to the interstate; in other cases it is miles off the route and hidden behind mountains. Either one was enough distance to take the lifeblood out of the little towns and filling station roadside attractions that cropped up along the route. By the 1980s, most of Route 66 was dead. That is, until barber Angel Delgadillo saw the nostalgic value in his small Route 66 town in Northern Arizona and founded the Arizona Historic Route 66 Association. This led to other towns and states establishing their own historic organization for the preservation and publicity of these roadside gems that were a window to the country’s past. Now Route 66 is the trip of a lifetime and attracts visitors from around the world to see the old neon signs, the cute little motor hotels, the vast sweeping landscapes, the roadside attractions and the classic Americana that is the drive-in hamburger stop.

Next week, we’ll take a closer look at some of what Route 66 has to offer near to home in California and Arizona.

  Charly Shelton