Route 66 marks 100 years as travelers seek its nostalgia

The 2,400-mile Route 66 corridor, assembled from existing local, state and national roads, opened in 1926 and cut more than 200 miles from the Chicago-to-Los Angeles trip. It quickly became one of the country’s most recognizable routes.

The U.S. 66 Highway Association sold it as the “shortest, best and most scenic route from Chicago through St. Louis to Los Angeles,” and Route 66 met growing demand for automobile travel. It became a lifeline for Dust Bowl migrants, a military artery during World War II and a magnet for postwar road trippers.

John Steinbeck popularized the name “Mother Road” in The Grapes of Wrath in 1939, and Bobby Troup’s 1946 song “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66,” later recorded by Nat King Cole and others, made the highway a national symbol of motion, escape and reinvention.

More than 250 Route 66 buildings, bridges, road alignments and other sites are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the National Park Service travel itinerary highlights more than 100 of them. The Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program works with private, nonprofit and government partners, providing cost-share grants for significant sites and supporting research, planning, oral history and educational outreach across the route’s period of significance from 1926 to 1985.

Congress created the U.S. Route 66 Centennial Commission in late 2020 to recommend fitting ways to mark the milestone. Springfield, Missouri, was chosen as the official host city for the national kickoff on April 30, 2026, and centennial programs have been coordinated across all eight Route 66 states: Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.