Dust, convoys and a post-war holiday
Route 66 was never only a tourist road. Official histories record three great waves of travel.
- The highway enabled the movement of emigrants out of the Dust Bowl. [source]
- During the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the Federal Highway Administration says, it was the primary route for the migration of farm workers from the Midwest to California. [source]
- John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath — and the 1940 film — sent the Joad family west on Route 66 from Oklahoma to California. [source]
- It enabled the mobilisation of military convoys during the Second World War. [source]
- After the war it fed a boom in automobile tourism. [source]
- In 1946 Bobby Troup composed “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66,” first recorded by Nat King Cole as the King Cole Trio. [source]
By the 1960s a television series had taken the name as well. [source] The road had become a story people already knew before they ever saw a shield by the verge.
How the interstates ended the official highway →
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