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And we continue with our American stories. Today we're going to dive into some of the history behind Route 66. Jim Hinckley is a world traveler and Route 66 enthusiast. Here's Jim on how this legendary highway came to be. R66 is a fascinating animal.
It is not our nation's oldest highway. It's not our most scenic highway. But it's always had the best press in publicity from its very inception in 1926. And it has morphed into a An amazing situation where it has been, it now has an international fan club. and has come to serve as a symbol for American freedom, the quintessential Great American Road Trip.
There's Route 66 associations in about a dozen countries that organize events, festivals, and tours. I work with several tour companies in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. It specialized just in Route 66 trips. But one of the most amazing things about Route 66 in the modern era is the highway does not exist. In 1984, the last community, Williams, Arizona, was bypassed.
By Interstate 40, in the following year, 1985, Route 66 was decertified and removed as an official U.S. highway.
so the ma most famous highway in America, technically, doesn't even exist. Route 66 connects Chicago to Santa Monica, California. Originally the western terminus was in Los Angeles, and then in the 1930s it was moved further west out to Santa Monica. And it was an evolutionary situation. President John Quincy Adams originally had proposed a nationwide system of highways.
and it was kind of a stillborn project. The railroad eclipsed that. And so that the idea kind of languished for a while. And it's actually the bicycle. In the late 1880s, bicycles evolved.
They went from the penny-farthing bicycles, the ones with the tall front wheel, the small back wheel. and became the modern safety bicycle. And in just a few short years, there was an absolute national obsession with bicycles. We went from having 24 bicycle manufacturers in the United States in 1890. to several hundred bicycle manufacturers in eighteen ninety six.
And so an organization was established called the League of American Wheelmen. They began petitioning and working with governments and lobbying for the creation of a good roads movement. And with the advent of the American auto industry in the mid eighteen nineties, This morphed into the Good Roads Association, the formation of AAA. and other organizations. And there was a situation of what they call named highways: the Lincoln Highway, the Dixie Highway.
uh the Jefferson Highway, the National Trails Highway. Mm. And they were attempts to create a nationwide network of roads, but it was still inadequate. And so, over a period of about fifteen years of of political wrangling, we finally developed in the mid-1920s the U.S. highway system.
Americans have always had wonderlust. You know, Daniel Boone, the Cumberland Gap, people moving west, we've always been a restless people. Uh the modern road trip again goes back to the bicycle. We had best-selling books. Mr.
A fellow named Stevens in the late 1870s did an around-the-world trip on a bicycle. and that became a best selling book. People were fascinated by the idea. And with the advent of the automobile, The automobile first came into being in the United States. Ransom E.
Olds of Oldsmobile started tinkering with this in the 1880s. The Duryea brothers actually started producing automobiles for sale about eighteen ninety five. But it was still a novelty. The Barnum and Bailey Circus in eighteen ninety six gave a Duryer motor wagon. top billing over the albino, the fat lady, and the bearded lady.
At the circus. Montgomery Ward said it was a fad you should take your children to see before it passes. Where people were interested in bicycle touring, now the automobilists became all the raids. People were taking trips, people were traveling. And with the advent of Route 66 in the U.S.
highway system, of course, this took on a new dimension. Uh was the automobile. Interestingly enough, It still took time, even though we had a US highway system. Route sixty six was not fully paved until nineteen thirty six. The 1930s, of course, it became the Great Depression, and Route 66 and other highways became a road of desperation.
as people fled to California and the West in hopes of better opportunity. 1939, 1940, you had The Grapes of Wrath, the book, and the movie. that proclaimed Route sixty six as the mother road. Then nineteen forty six you had uh Bobby Troop's song about Get Your Kicks on Route sixty six. was sung by Nap King Cole.
And then in the early 60s, we had the television program, Route 66, the most popular television program of the time, the Lucille Ball Show. There was a three-part episode where Desi and Lucy drove from New York to California. And a lot of this they took and they were on Route sixty six.
So the Rhodes always had the best press and publicity. and if you fast forward to the modern era. I was very privileged to listen to a fellow from the Czech Republic. Talk about Route 66. And Zenik is the founder of the Czechoslovakian Route 66 Association.
and he talked about growing up in a communist country. listening to Radio Free American, and watching bootleg copies of movies like Easy Rider. Which was filmed on Route 66. And Route 66, the motorcycle, Harley Davidson's. all came to symbolize a freedom.
And as he put it, for his generation, Route 66, the road trip. The American road trip came to symbolize freedom the way the Statue of Liberty had done for previous generation. Anywhere from sixty to seventy-five percent of the travelers on Route 66. are from other countries. and there's international association all along the road.
For example, in the little town of Elkhart, Illinois, There's a bank that was built in 1909, and the town is pretty much a ghost town. It has one block. This beautiful bank was acquired by Peter Neuhaus Neuhaus, And he's a Dutch hydraulic engineer who lived in South Africa for many years. He's a woodworker by hobby, and his wife is a mural artist. They fell in love with Route 66.
They bought this bank, they renovated it, and they created the Wild Hair Cafe. A delightful little place. In Kingman, Arizona, there's an old 1939 motel, the El Trovador. And like many old motels, it became a flop house and a literal crack house. Just horrible place.
and a gentleman from Israel. passionate about Route 66 has bought and renovated the hotel. You have people buying old motels and old cafes and renovating them. You have a younger generation that's walking away from corporate jobs, wanting more out of life, more quality.
So they're they're opening businesses on Route 66. There was one family in They had a fairly decent job. He worked for an oil company, six figures a year. And it was just a soul-crushing job. And they took a Route 66 trip.
They fell in love with the highway, the culture, the people. He quit. He walked away from it all, bought a 1939 motel in Tucum Carrie, New Mexico. And he told me during an interview: he says, I've never worked this hard in my life for so little money, and I've never been this happy. He was meeting people from all over the world and doing something he enjoyed.
I've traveled the road off and on since 1959, and most of my life's been tied to this thing, but. It's just astounding what the road has become. A great example is in 2018. I was very privileged to speak. at the second European festival, 166 festival, in Zlin, the Czech Republic.
And it was surreal. It was a quintessential small-town American event. A ZZ Top Tribute Band. And when the band wasn't playing, they were playing country music, Hank Williams and Marty Robbins. And they had a cruise night.
dri people driving seventy Ford pickups and fifty seven Chevys and And it was an American celebration, a Route 66 celebration. 20,000 plus people from 10 countries, including Brazil. And here I am, and it feels totally American. But I'm in a place where I can't understand anybody, read anything, and I have no idea what I'm eating. It's just really astounding.
what this road has become. And thanks to Jim Hinckley. For his work on the piece, and you can find more of Jim's work at JimHinkleysAmerica.com. And by the way, it's just a story of so many things, but in the end, movement and freedom and human freedom. And we're a moving people.
We came to this country, many of our parents and grandparents and great grandparents from other places. The story of Route 66 Here. on our American story. 10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit.
Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000. This is where mindset comes in.
Someone will be eliminated. Pressure is coming down. This. is Trainer Games. Watch it on Prime Video starting January 8th.
Is this this one? Shh. You won't believe what my new friend just told me about dinosaurs. Is your child having conversations you never imagined? Are they learning without realizing it?
It's not a tablet. It's not a toy. It's Miko Mini Plus, the AI-powered companion that turns curiosity into endless learning. Hear the future of playtime. Meet the extraordinary Miko Mini Plus.
Only at Costco. Come for the Black Friday seasonal savings. Stay for the award-winning reporting. For a limited time, access to the Washington Post is just 99 cents. That's unlimited access to all of the posts for only 99 cents every four weeks.
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That's Washington Post dot com slash iHeart. Every generation, every sacrifice, our nation's service members have stood up for our freedom, our families, and our future.
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