History Online

by Mark W. Sorensen

If you ever plan to motor west
Travel my way, take the highway that's the best,
Get your kicks on Route 66!

In order to spend the weekend rafting through the Grand Canyon on the Hualapai Indian Reservation, http://www.itcaonline.com/Tribes/hualapai.htm my wife and I exited Interstate 40 near Williams, Arizona, and headed west on old Route 66. We stopped briefly to see the kitsch in Seligman, stayed two nights in the Lodge at Peach Springs, and then headed for the bright lights of the truck stops of Kingman.

It winds from Chicago to L.A.
More than two thousand miles all the way. Get your kicks on Route 66!

As we waited for road crews on the two-lane, I thought of my parents making this trip in 1953 with no air conditioning. I thought of my newlywed in-laws rolling west to California in 1946 (in a pre-war car) to begin a career in television. Both families were driving the road the way we picture it, they started in Chicago and ended up in Santa Monica, a journey of 2,448 miles.

Now you go through St. Looey, Joplin, Missouri
And Oklahoma City looks might pretty.
You'll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico
Flagstaff, Arizona; don't forget Winona,
Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino.

Although our rental car was a Chevy, with Diet Coke in the cooler there was no way I could pretend that I was "Tod" or "Buz" in my Corvette convertible "way out on the highway looking for adventure" (Martin Milner and George Maharis starred in TV's Route 66, 1960-64) http://us.imdb.com/. Rather, the words to "Route 66" by the late Bobby Troup kept echoing in my head. Troup wrote this in 1946 after making the trip to Los Angeles to find fame and fortune as a songwriter and actor. I'm partial to the Nat King Cole Trio rendition introduced in March 1946 on the Frank Sinatra "Old Gold" radio show.

Won't you get hip to this timely tip
When you make that California trip.
Get your kicks on Route 66.

Route 66 purists will tell you that the original road started in Chicago on Jackson Boulevard at Michigan Avenue. It then ran through Cicero, Berwyn, Joliet, Wilmington, Gardner, Dwight, Pontiac, Bloomington, Funk's Grove, Lincoln, Elkhart, Springfield, Edwardsville, and crossed the Mississippi on the currently closed "Chain of Rocks Bridge" http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ gware/IL66.HTM. Detailed driving instructions for retracing Route 66 in Illinois can be found at http://newhis-toric66.com/illinois/detill.html.

"...and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads, 66 is the mother road, the road of flight." The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck -1939

66's beginnings date back to the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 and the Federal Highway Act of 1921 http://www.route-66.org/article.htm. Oklahoma state highway commissioner and president of the Associated Highways Association of America Cyrus Stevens Avery pushed for an interstate highway system. He helped select existing state roads to become part of the system and made sure the Chicago to California route went through his state http://www.hhim.com/66/history.htm. In November 1926, Route 66 was christened with 800 miles of "hard roads." The entire route would not be completely paved until 1937. In Illinois the route began as the "Pontiac Trail" in 1915 and paving was started in 1918 with the name becoming the not very lyrical "State Bond Issue 4" http://new.historic66.com/illinois/.

The National Historic Route 66 Federation website http://vvww.national66.com/66hstry.html contains a well-written essay about the social, cultural and economic importance of Route 66 to America. The "Largest Route 66 Resource on the Web" http://www.route66clicks.com/ 8states.html has links to web sites in the eight states traversed by Route 66, a list of photo sites, and dozens of association links and articles. The link to the glossy Route 66 Magazine is http://w\vvv.route66magazine.com/ route66 main.htm.

The "Route 66 Association of Illinois" http://www.il66assoc.org/ publishes a magazine, promotes preservation and education efforts, and sponsors the Route 66 Museum and Hall of Fame http://www.ilohvv-y.eom/r/ rte66mhf.htm at the Dixie Truckers Home (off Interstate 55) in McLean, Illinois http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/ galler\Villin029.htm. Inductees into the Hall of Fame include both people and places http://www.ii66assoc.org/idx I a9.htm.

One of the honorees, the 1926 "Russell Soulsby Shell Service Station" http://vvrww.suntimes.com/cgi-bin/print.cgi in Mt. Olive even has its own preservation society. My wife and I can personally recommend Hall-member "The Ariston Cafe" http://.ariston-cafe.com/ariston.asp?p=home in Litchfield.You'll try to say no the dessert tray but you know you really want it.

Drive-in movie theaters first opened in Illinois in the 1940s. By the mid-1950s there was a string of them strategically placed so youngsters could see them from the major highways and beg their parents to pull in. A complete list of Drive-in theaters along Route 66 http://www.driveintheater.com/route66.htm explains that there were eight in Illinois at one time. Only the Sky View Drive-in in Litchfield http://www.litchfieldskyview.com/ is still in operation; a Route 66 Drive-in Theater, located at Knight's Action Park in Springfield, recently opened—just off 1-72.

Finally, "Real-Time Route 66 Weather" http://www.hhjm.com/66/ lets you view the weather and temperature simultaneously in eight Route states at one time. So, even if you're a homebody and don't have a flashy 1960 red Corvette, you can still get your "clicks" on Route 66.(

Mark Sorensen is Assistant Director at the Illinois State Archives and serves on the Board of the Illinois State Historical Society.

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