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The main street of America
Route 66 revisited

By David J. Craig

Mention Route 66, and most people think of the 1960s television show of the same name and a southwestern highway littered with neon lights and gaudy, fiberglass mascots announcing garishly painted gas stations, diners, and motels. Today, the 2,448-mile stretch, once the quickest way to drive from Chicago to Los Angeles, seems to embody the ambition, optimism, and adventurousness of mid-20th-century America. But it also boasts a colorful history that extends as far back as the 1920s.

	Route 66 was designed during America's 1920s economic boom and the cafes, motels, and gas stations that soon sprang up to serve construction crews, migrants, and truckers were among the few in the nation to actually flourish during the Great Depression. The businesses that came to symbolize the road in the popular imagination, however, are the funky joints that showed no shame in attempting to lure the streams of tourists who followed Route 66 westward after World War II. Motel rooms shaped like wigwams, Mexican restaurants bearing the likeness of giant sombreros, and 30-foot-tall statues atop eateries assured that travelers never knew what to expect around the next bend. Opened in 1935, New Mexico's Club Café was one of the earliest Route 66 establishments, and one of the more low-key. Like many other businesses along the road, it closed after Route 66 was decommissioned as a federal highway in 1984. Club Café by Shellee Graham, Santa Rosa, New Mexico, 1991.

Return to Route 66, a multimedia exhibition at Lexington's Museum of Our National Heritage, showcases the cultural significance of "the Mother Road," as John Steinbeck called it in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, from its 1926 commissioning to the present. A lively collection of historic artifacts and memorabilia stands alongside 66 contemporary color and black-and-white photographs of Route 66 landmarks by St. Louis artist Shellee Graham. The exhibition is free and runs through September 9.

Elysa Engelman (GRS'03), a doctoral student in BU's American and New England Studies Program, spent the past 18 months researching and writing the show's historical text and helping to secure some of the pieces on display.

Playfully arranged around Graham's photographs is an amazing amount of bric-a-brac of the sort that Route 66 collectors fawn over -- gas station signs and an actual pump, antique oil and gas cans, collectible ashtrays, road maps, postcards, and even a huge neon sign that once advertised a Mexican restaurant in Tucumcari, N.M.

When the first Phillips 66 gasoline service station opened in Wichita, Kans., in 1927, the business of retailing gas was still new. Prior to 1920, grocers and blacksmiths provided car owners with fuel from a single curbside pump. But during the late 1920s and 1930s, when the renovated Phillips 66 station in this photograph was probably erected, several large petroleum companies emerged to compete against the small family-owned gas stations that had sprouted up in the 1920s, attracting customers with distinct building designs and promises of elaborate customer service. Within 10 years of opening its first station, Phillips 66 had 6,750 stations in 12 states, each identifiable by the orange-and-black sign resembling a Route 66 shield (a company executive is said to have thought of adding the number to the Phillips name while traveling on Route 66). By 1940, however, architect Walter Dorwin Teague's design for Texaco stations established a trend that proved enduring -- housing service stations in square white utilitarian buildings instead of ones shaped like country cottages, teepees, or Chinese pagodas. Restored Phillips 66 Station by Shellee Graham, McLean, Texas, 1991.

But far from being merely nostalgic, the exhibition focuses on why Route 66 gained mythic status among many Americans and the impact the road has had upon the communities it cuts through. We learn, for instance, that in 1938 the city of Alhambra, Calif., population 40,000, claimed to have raked in $66 million from tourists traveling the route that year, and that during the Great Depression many southwestern towns abutting the road became populated by bankrupt farmers who ran out of money on their way to the West Coast. Videos show what travel on Route 66 was like during its infancy.

"I knew visitors would probably remember the Route 66 TV show from the 1960s, and the show's theme song, and that they would have this idea of Route 66 as being filled with tourist attractions and a lot of kitsch," says Engelman, who is the museum's first Guy O. Matthews Fellow, a position that, through an arrangement between BU and the museum, is awarded annually to a BU graduate student. (The show, many will remember, starred Martin Milner and George Maharis, and its theme song, the Bobby Troup composition "[Get Your Kicks on] Route 66," was a hit first for Nat King Cole.)

"But I found that there are complex and fascinating stories to tell about this road," says Engelman. "For example, it was one of the first federal highways built in the 1920s. For that reason, we include a display about the Model T Ford instead of a 1950s Buick or Corvette, because it's a strong visual reminder of how old the road is."

	Elysa Engelman (GRS'03) researched and wrote the text that provides historical background for Return to Route 66, a multimedia exhibition at Lexington's Museum of Our National Heritage celebrating the road's cultural significance. Photo by Vernon Doucette

There are more unexpected pieces in the exhibition. An ornate lantern made by an Italian prisoner of war at a Hereford, Tex., POW camp during World War II is on loan from a small Texas historical society. The camp was near Route 66 and left an indelible mark on the surrounding community, Engelman says. Prisoners would trade with locals arts and wares they produced from found objects for hard-to-get items such as cigarettes. The lantern is constructed out of cable and tin-can strips.

Most of the artifacts in the show are on loan from collectors and institutions around the United States and a few pieces -- such as a neon sign that once belonged to a Bethany, Okla., used car lot -- have been purchased by the museum. "It took a lot of convincing to get some of the pieces in the exhibition," says Engelman. "Some of the small museums along Route 66 were hesitant to lend their artifacts to us because we're so far away and because they want to keep everything they own on view."

It was also a challenge, she says, to provide accurate information about many of the subjects of Graham's photographs, since many famous Route 66 landmarks have been torn down or renovated since the photos were shot in the early 1990s. (The road lost its status as a federal highway in 1984, and while about 80 percent of it is still drivable, in effect it has been replaced by a series of new highways.) To get the information, Engelman turned to the Internet, even scanning the Web sites of vacationers who posted their own photographs taken along the route.

For a highway once touted as an express route from Chicago to L.A., Route 66 charts a rather curious path through eight states. That might be because Cyrus Avery, the chief architect of a massive system of federal roads mandated by the 1925 National Highway Act, made sure the officially designated "U.S. Highway 66" passed through his home state of Oklahoma, according to Elysa Engelman. As the federal government picked up only half the tab for the nation's new highways, the curiosity of travelers in the 1920s and 1930s might also have been piqued by the drastic difference in the quality of Route 66 from state to state: Missouri laid down a four-lane superhighway, but Oklahoma built a concrete road just six feet wide. The entire stretch of Route 66 was not paved until 1938, after federal aid programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps sent construction crews to complete even the most remote areas, according to Engelman. Dog on Route 66 by Shellee Graham, near Acton, Oklahoma, 1993.

"If a building or a site no longer existed or was changed since the time the photos were taken, I wanted people to know that," says Engelman. She notes that in the last 10 years a combination of federal assistance and renewed interest among tourists has led to the reopening of many small businesses along the route.

"As Route 66 has become more of a commodity and a destination than an actual path in the last 10 years, it's easy to remove it from its origins and surroundings," says Engelman, who plans to work as a museum curator or historian after finishing her doctorate. "I hope this show will help people understand the significance of Route 66. And then a diner in Maine or in Guam named for Route 66 will make a bit more sense."

The Museum of Our National Heritage, at 33 Marrett Road, Lexington, is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday. For more information, call (781) 861-6559 or visit www.mnh.org.

23 April 2001
Boston University
Office of University Relations