The highway that connected Chicago with the west coast and rivaled the railroad as the preeminent means of transportation and commercial shipping also helped to foster America's burgeoning love affair with the automobile and it's impact on culture and commerce.
As the number of people taking to the open road increased, business owners became more inovative to accomodate those demands. Folks journeying along Route 66 often passed on expensive hotels in favor of more affordable motels, which evolved from the earlier auto camps that towns created by roping off sections of vacant land for travelers to camp for the night.
Roadside architecture also reflected the changing life and times - from towering, neon-lit signage to the structurial design of restaurants and lodging that took on a wide array of contrasting styles from the zigzagging lines and angles of art deco to the adobe appearance and projected beams of Pueblo Revival that is most popular in the southwest.
So beloved and embedded in the national conscious, the mother road's legend grew with the release of songwriter Bobby troup's immortal "Get Your Kicks On Route 66". Recorded by Nat King Cole in 1946, the tune became an instant hit and has since been performed in various other forms by The Rolling Stones, Depeche Mode and Buckwheat Zydeco.
That romantic sense of freedom on Route 66 was also the subject of a television series by the same name that ran from 1960 to 1964 that starred Martin Milner and George Maharis as two drifters seeking adventure along the two-lane roadway in their Corvette.
By the mid-1950s, however, adventure was of little priority to the typical traveler - the onset of a faster time was at hand, and American's wanted to get where they were going as quickly as possible without the irritating in-town stoplights and traffic congestion so prevalent on Route 66. Suddenly, getting there was no longer half the fun.
In 1957, inspired by the design and scale of the German Autobahn that he had witnessed as a general during World War II, Presidend Eisenhower enacted the National Highway Act to provide for the construction of a comprehensive interstate system to more efficiently move civilians and, in times of emergency, military personel.
With that, Route 66 was doomed to extinction. As the interstate system usurped section after section, the "Main Street of America" became relegated to service and frontage roads or abandoned altogether. When I-40 opened on October 13, 1984, the final stretch of Route 66 near the town of Williams, Arizona was officially decommissioned. The Mother Road was no more.
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