The Mother Road…The Beginning

Riding Route 66, The Mother Road

It was the first of it’s kind, the automobiles’ equivalent to the great intercontinental railway. Possibly the most well known road in the United States if not the world. A simple two-lane road from Chicago Illinois to Santa Monica California, the first highway across the United States of America. The road also became a symbol of the United States, and of the people who built and lived on it.
Just above my head is the "Begin Route 66" Sign
It's located at E. Adams St. & S. Michigan Ave.
Downtown Chicago!


The road that led the way across the farmland of the midwest, the great plains, and the deserts of the southwest, from the freshwater of the great lakes to the salwater of the Paific Ocean. Truely an American icon if there is one…the mother road.

Before route 66 was born the nation did not have any one trans-continental road, but rather a patchwork of state, county and rural farm roads. To go across the country by automobile was still a novelty, as was the automobile. Driving was still in it’s infancy and roads were nothing like they are today, mostly unpaved, rutted and often muddy farm roads and wagon trails was all that existed making travel by car difficult if not impossible. To go from Illinois to California was a navagational nightmare, no established routes, roadmaps or guide to go by. Navigating your way down farmroads that abruptly ended at a stream or river, changed direction or just ended was an exercise in frustration.

The condition of the roads were equally disturbing, where there was actual road-bed it was usually poorly maintained and often unmarked. Most of the time the established roads were only near a large town or county seat, and ended where the city, county or state just ran out of money and reverted to the rutted wagon trails they were to begin with. The unpaved roads were a nightmare, typically nothing more than deep ruts of compacted barren soil made by years of horse-drawn carrages and wagons. Whenever it would rain they would often turn into sloppy mud-holes, sometimes waist deep and completely impassable. To get stuck in one usually meant hours, if not days of digging, pulling, and pushing to free a car from the adhesive-like muck. Some of the roads out west were nothing more than remnants of the great westward migration, wagon and cattle drive trails, worn into the dry soil by those who first settled the area.

On July 11, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson, an avid motorist himself, signed the Federal Aid Road Act, setting the groundwork for the national road system and it’s funding. Also known as the “good roads act” it was instrumental in the genesis of the United States’ highway system. Soon after it’s enactment all types of highways were under construction, with such names as the Dixie, Lincoln and Old Trails Highway, construction boomed, and soon highways with all sorts of names began crossing states. In 1925 these names were replaced by federally assinged route numbers to easily identify and administrate them.

The idea fo a Chicago–to–Los Angeles highway began with Cyrus Avery, an Oaklahoma highway commissioner and John Woodruff of Springfield, Missouri. They recognized the need for a offically designated interstate road connecting the nation. They actively lobbied the government, and in 1925 Avery spent most of the year working with an appointed committee to establish one. Then on November 11th, 1926 Congress authorized and designated the road, officialy beginning route 66. An efficent, safe way to move both the people and the goods they produced across and throughout the country.

This summer I was fortunate enough to be a tour guide on route 66, escorting people from across the globe down the infamous route on another well–known American Icon, the Harley–Davidson motorcycle. However I was not able to ride one, I was “the man in the van with a plan” following them with luggage, refreshments and trailer with a spare motorcycle if one were to breakdown. It was my job to work with the leader of the pack Stuart, to make sure that we made it the entire length of the route safely and comfortably as possible. These people had opted to spend thier vacation riding across the country on the mother road, all 2449+ miles of it, or at least what was left of it. We had a long way to go and many trials and tribulations along the way but that’s what makes it an adventure. These were no ordinary road-trips, but rather an up-close examination of the “American dream” and those who pursued it along the way. We were to see the “REAL United States of Ameica” not the usual tourist destinations, or Hollywood’s version of what it should be, for good or ill we were out to experience it, not just “see” it.