As long ago as 1990, popular Route 66 historian Michael Wallis, in his book Route 66, the Mother Road, discussed the “magic” and “romance” of old U.S. Highway 66, which had at last been totally bypassed by the U.S. interstate system five years before.Today, the myth of Route 66 is alive and well, though changed by time and circumstances, having grown out of books, movies, songs, and the experiences of millions of people who have lived on and traveled the road in the past hundred years. That myth draws people from all over the globe every year to “get their kicks” and “motor west on the highway that’s the best,” as sung by Bobby Troup in the 1946 record “Get Your Kicks on Route 66.” Or to at least come and look at what’s left.So how did that happen? How did a road laid out as part of the National Highway System in 1926 take on mythological qualities that are known around the world?In his meticulously researched book Route 66 and the Formation of a National Cultural Icon, Daniel Milowski seeks to find out just that as he details the changes on and along the highway over time and zeroes in on a case study of towns along a 130-mile segment of the highway in northwest Arizona, especially Williams, Seligman, and Kingman.Milowski, an American history professor at Arizona State University, is well-equipped for his undertaking. As a longtime student of Route 66 history, he has written extensively on the old road and the way it has affected the communities in his part of the country.The book is divided into four sections: the years predating U.S. 66, the birth of 66 and the National Highway System, the road’s growth and rise to prominence in the 1950s, and finally, a look at how what’s left of the Mother Road has been turned into an American tourist attraction.If a reader is seeking an in-depth look at the economic effects of Route 66 on a few communities over the past one hundred years, this book is just that. If a reader wants to look at the whole of the old highway and the creation and growth of its worldwide image, that’s here too, but it has to be inferred from the close-up on Route 66 in northwest Arizona.The book begins with a densely detailed description of how the highway came to be, beginning with the Beale Road in 1857. It follows the railroad’s entrance into northwest Arizona around 1880 and the federal government’s involvement in development of the National Highway System in the 1920s, including the effort to lay out, number, and advertise Route 66 as the “Best Way West.” The second part segues into an equally detailed case study of the northwest Arizona communities, including their socioeconomic conditions, discriminatory societies, and relation to the tourists who come to town.And then came the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, which began to replace the old, dangerous roadway with safer roads to accommodate the ever-increasing motor traffic—but in the process bypassed dozens of Route 66 towns.Throughout, the author presents two views: overviews of each stage of the highway’s birth, growth, and demise, including the mythology of each era; and examinations of the communities in that 130-mile segment, including their economic ups and downs, their social organizations, and the effects of racism on their development. It is in these case studies where the book truly stands out. Most histories of Route 66 focus on middle-class White vacationers who, in fact, are the vast majority of travelers today, and rarely mention the difficulties faced by Black travelers or the minority populations of Route 66 towns.The book focuses especially on Seligman, a former railroad and highway town, drawing on interviews with members of the Delgadillo family, who moved to Seligman from Mexico in 1916 and made their livings from the railroad and the highway. The area around Seligman was no stranger to travelers: It was first traversed by the Native American Mojave Road, which Spanish settlers followed in the 1500s and became part of the Beale Wagon Road in 1857. The town itself was created after the arrival of the railroads in the 1880s, and it benefited from early highway tourism, at least as far as the local White population was concerned. In 1923, after a union strike threatened to close down the town, Angel Delgadillo Sr. purchased property near the railroad depot and opened a pool and gambling hall catering to Latinos and other “excluded” groups. Delgadillo eventually expanded, adding a barbershop and a grocery store, thereby providing an economic anchor for Seligman’s Latino community (53). For several decades, the Delgadillos—and Seligman—profited from the railroad and travelers on U.S. Highway 66, but then things changed: first when the town was bypassed by Interstate 40 in 1978, and later, in 1985, when the Santa Fe Railroad eliminated Seligman as a division point and passenger stop. As the railroad employees moved away and highway traffic disappeared, the Delgadillos, who had worked to create a viable Hispanic business community, brought business leaders together to develop a plan to attract Route 66 tourists.Omitted (or overlooked) in most earlier histories of U.S. 66, but prominently covered in this volume, is an examination of the discriminatory practices in the highway’s communities and their effects on visiting minority tourists. These include mentions of the few listings of available services for Black travelers in The Green Book, issues with the Hualapai tribe fighting tribal termination (148–51; see House Concurrent Resolution 108 and Public Law 280, both 1953); and segregation issues with Latino students in Williams schools (151), among others. A bright spot in Williams was the Fred Harvey Company, which provided both employment and service opportunities to minorities in its café and Frey Marcos Hotel.As various states—beginning with Arizona and the movement originating in Seligman—created the Historic Route 66 designation (1987), they also formed local and state Route 66 associations to promote what was left of the old road. At the same time, the highway’s cultural artifacts—such as John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, Bobby Troup’s “Get Your Kicks on Route 66,” Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and the Route 66 television show of the 1960s—began to create a new highway myth based on nostalgia for a time that, as Milowski points out, actually never was, and places that never were. That’s the mythology, according to Milewski, that brings tourists to what’s left of the old road today.The title of the last section of the book, however, is a misnomer. Although it is titled “Route 66 Requiem,” it focuses on the willpower of a few people in the region—and ultimately across the United States—who believed that the idea of Route 66, if presented correctly, could revitalize their towns. In that, they have been at least partially successful.
Susan Croce Kelly (Thu,) studied this question.