Hop Aboard: We're Taking a Pop Culture Road Trip on Route 66: NPR

A “Route 66” sign is painted on the asphalt near Amboy in California’s Mojave Desert, February 27, 2019.

Éric Baradat/AFP via Getty Images

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Éric Baradat/AFP via Getty Images

Route 66 celebrates 100 years as the nation’s most famous highway, an icon of American culture.

As it crosses eight states – from Chicago to Santa Monica, California – its charm lies in driving on the open road, through plains and prairies, canyons and deserts. Discover big cities, cow towns and ghost towns, stopping at roadside motels, retro restaurants and kitschy tourist traps.

Like any good road trip, Route 66 has a soundtrack, starting with the famous anthem sung by Nat King Cole (and later, his daughter Natalie).

If you ever consider driving west/
I travel my way, I take the highway which is the best/
Take your foot on Route 66…

Bobby Troup, then an aspiring songwriter and jazz pianist, wrote this 1946 song during a road trip he took to California. Over the years, many others have recorded their own versions, including Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters.

It winds from Chicago to Los Angeles/
Over 2,000 miles in total/
Take your foot on Route 66…

The famous thoroughfare was established in 1926, and three years later the Depression hit, followed by the Dust Bowl, when drought and dust storms devastated farmland.

A family in Pittsburg County, Oklahoma, was forced to leave their home in June 1938 due to a severe drought in the area.

Dorothea Lange/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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Dorothea Lange/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

“The Dust Bowl drove thousands of families from their farms in the Midwest and Southwest states,” said Jim Ross, author of nine books about Route 66. He lives on an original stretch of the highway. “Most of them headed to California, because that’s where the jobs were, or so they thought.”

How Dorothea Lange taught us to see hunger and humanity

For the Farm Security Administration project, Dorothea Lange photographed displaced families as they traveled West. Migrants rode in covered cars, hitchhiked and walked barefoot with their belongings on highways.

Route 66 expert Michael Wallis says their journey was harrowing: “Following the scent of citrus to California to rebuild their lives, they clung to that old dream, the land of milk and honey, which failed them.

The writer John Steinbeck recounts the migration along Route 66 – which he called “the mother road” – in The Grapes of Wrath.

Steinbeck’s 1939 novel won a Pulitzer Prize and was made into a now-classic film. It starred Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, an ex-con traveling from Oklahoma with his sharecropper family.

“Wherever there’s a fight to the point where hungry people can’t eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beating up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be there like guys scream when they’re angry,” he said in a monologue that would later inspire songwriters Woody Guthrie and Bruce Springsteen.

And the legends of Route 66 have shifted gears with the times.

After World War II, cars and tourism on Route 66 were heavily commercialized. Families began taking road trips across the country. And in the early 1960s, their adventurous spirit was captured by rock and roll star Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones.

This is from St. Louis, Joplin, Missouri/
and Oklahoma City is so pretty./
You will see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico/
Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Winona/
Kingsman, Barstow, San Bernardino…

Route 66 was also celebrated by a television series of the same name, with a theme song by composer and arranger Nelson Riddle. It features two young adventurers who travel the Trans-American Highways in a convertible Corvette.

Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in a scene from the 1969 film Easy rider.

Archives Bettmann/Getty Images

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Archives Bettmann/Getty Images

Route 66 was also the scenic route in the 1969 film. Easy rider. It starred Henry Fonda’s son Peter, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson as counterculture drifters who traveled on motorcycles.

“All we are to them, man, is someone who needs a haircut,” Hopper’s character says in one scene, referring to some enemies.

“Oh no,” Nicholson’s character responds. “What you represent is Freedom.

In the 21st century

In 1985, Route 66 was officially declassified as a federal highway. But its appeal has endured. Two years later, the English electronic group Depeche Mode made a music video for it.

Won’t you be hip to this timely tip?/
And you will take this trip to California/
Enjoy Route 66

The documentary Dispatch Mode: 101 followed a group of fans traveling across the country on a tour bus. It was an inspiration for reality TV shows in the 1990s: The real world And Road rules.

Route 66 was also celebrated in the 2006 Pixar animated film. Cars. With John Meyer’s version of the old classic as the theme song, Cars takes place in a fictional town along Route 66: Heater Springs. The popularity of the film and a sequel led to a theme park attraction, at Disneyland’s California Adventure.

A 2012 photo provided by Disney Parks shows the Radiator Springs Racers attraction.

Paul Hiffmeyer/Disney Parks via Getty Images

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Paul Hiffmeyer/Disney Parks via Getty Images

Author Michael Wallis has served as a consultant to Disney Imagineers and Pixar filmmakers. And he was the voice of the animated sheriff in the film – a 1949 Mercury Club Coupe police car.

Wallis co-founded the Route 66 Alliance and serves on the Congressional Highway Congress Centennial Commission. The 81-year-old says the road has sparked his imagination since he was a child.

“There’s a sense of adventure,” he said. “If you haven’t been to a pie palace or greasy spoon on Mother Road, you don’t know what to expect.”

Wallis’s 1990 bestseller The mother road is credited with sparking renewed interest in Route 66.

“It’s the path that connects two major cities spread across two-thirds of the continent,” he said. “People rent you a room, sell you a cheeseburger, a glimpse of the snake pit. A dream. An illusion. That’s what it’s all about.”