Existing comment:
1930's - 1940's
The People's Highway: Route 66
Life on the Open Road
In the 1920's and 1930's, new highways began to affect people's lives. Some Americans used highways to migrate. Others earned a living on the road, or by its side, running businesses. Many Americans began to take to the highways for pleasure. Travelers often saw the highway as a symbol of independence and freedom, even though they depended on government for the roads they drove on, and on businesses such as automobile and tire manufacturers, oil refiners, gas stations, and roadside restaurants for support.
Route 66 was commissioned in 1926 and fully paved by the last 1930's. It ran from Chicago to Los Angeles, creating connections between hundreds of small towns and providing a trucking rote through the Southwest. While not the first long-distance highway, or the most traveled, Route 66 gained fame beyond almost any other road. Dubbed the "Mother Road" by John Steinbeck in "The Grapes of Wrath," Route 66 carried hundreds of thousands of Depression era migrants from the Midwest who went to California hoping for jobs and a better life. |