Route 66: Main Street of America

Songs have been sung and stories and books written about Route 66. In his book The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck called this ribbon of asphalt and concrete the "Mother Road." Since it incorporated the main street of each town along its path, Route 66 was also called the "Main Street of America." From the Roaring Twenties until the l960s, Route 66 was the main highway from the Midwest to the West Coast. The road began in Chicago and ended on a bluff high above the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica, California.This two-lane highway crossed two-thirds of the nation and rambled through eight states and three time zones. Traveling Route 66, families might sleep in a wigwam and eat breakfast in a cafe shaped like a shoe or a jackrabbit. They could picnic in the shade of a huge papier-mâché dinosaur and read funny Burma-ShaveTM signs along the roadsides. Author: JUDDI MORRIS is the award-winning author of The Harvey Girls: The Women Who Civilized the West and Tending the Fire: The Story of Maria Martinez.