Illinois Bicentennial

Get Your Kicks on Route 66

The numerical designation 66 was assigned to the Chicago-to-Los Angeles route in the summer of 1926. With that designation came its acknowledgment as one of the nation’s principal east-west arteries. Public road planners intended U.S. 66 to connect the main streets of rural and urban communities along its course for the most practical of reasons: most small towns had no prior access to a major national thoroughfare.

From 1933 to 1938 thousands of unemployed male youths from virtually every state were put to work as laborers on road gangs to pave the final stretches of the road. As a result of this monumental effort, the Chicago-to-Los Angeles highway was reported as “continuously paved” in 1938.

Store owners, motel managers, and gas station attendants recognized early on that even the poorest travelers required food, automobile maintenance, and adequate lodging. Just as New Deal work relief programs provided employment with the construction and the maintenance of Route 66, the appearance of countless tourist courts, gas stations and garages, diners, and cabin camps (cottages) and motor lodges, promised sustained economic growth after the road’s completion.

By 1970, nearly all segments of original Route 66 were bypassed by a modern four-lane highway. In many states, Route 66 parallels the interstate highway with some one-of-a-kind attractions along the way.