It’s road trip season. And Route 66 – the Mother Road – running from Chicago to Los Angeles, is the iconic and most historic road trip highway.
First opened in 1926, Route 66 later took a back seat to interstate and superhighways that provided a faster and more efficient way to get from here to there.
But the historic road still calls to people like Tucson photographer Terrence Moore, who first traveled Route 66 when he was nine years old when his family was moving from Minnesota to California.
“Stories from the Mother Road” includes photographs of curio shops, vintage motels, neon signs, and quirky roadside attractions from a bygone era on Route 66.
“Much of my life was formed by the open road; which includes Route 66 as well as many other U.S. highways that all inspire adventure,” said Moore. “The feeling of rolling down the highway brings excitement, curiosity, and discovery that I am itching to share through my pictures.”
PHX visitors don’t need a plane ticket to view the exhibition, which is located pre-security in Phoenix Sky Harbor’s Terminal 4, level 3 through April 2024.
Better yet: snap a photo with the large-scale cutout image of a 1941 Ford Super Deluxe Woody Station Wagon, share it with the Phoenix Airport Museum (Airport.Museum@phoenix.gov), and receive a gift.
Road trips are all the rage right now, so it is fun to see the iconic landmarks and images of Route 66 featured in the new exhibit at John Wayne Airport (JWA) in Santa Ana, CA.
The pastel paintings on display through April 15, 2021, and are all by Ruth Kurisu.
“I have traveled down Route 66 several times over the years and witnessed both its decline, rebirth, and preservation as a living time capsule and wanted to preserve this historical highway in my own way,” said Kurisu.
Kurisu’s exhibit is on display pre-security, on the Departure (upper) Level near security screening areas in Terminals A, B, and C and on the Arrival (lower) Level adjacent to Baggage Carousels 1 and 4.
Interstate highways and the demise of Main Street America have turned many modern-day road trips into boring long hauls from here to there.
A Streamlined House Car designed by the Brooks Stevens firm of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, circa 1936. From a Private Collection / Courtesy Harley-Davidson Museum
Those yearning for the good old days — ones that may have included station wagons and stops at roadside attractions — might want to motor on over to two new museum exhibits celebrating the rise of car culture and the transformation of the family vacation into an American ritual.
On Saturday, the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, rolled out “The American Road,” an exhibit that uses hundreds of artifacts and many personal stories to examine the evolution of the quintessential American road trip from its early beginnings in the 1930s to what it has come to represent in our culture today.
“The 1930s was the decade when you had a lot of infrastructure coming into place, including improved roads, full-service gas stations, early auto courts and other services, so we start there,” said Kristen Jones, manager of exhibits and curatorial at the Harley-Davidson Museum.
In the early 1930s, there were about 160,000 travel trailers on the road, Jones said, so on display in the exhibit’s first gallery is a 26-foot house car designed by American industrial designer (and Milwaukee native) Brooks Stevens. “It’s built on a truck chassis and has many of the comforts of home, including a galley kitchen, a bed, a dinette and a bathroom,” said Jones. A 4-foot salesman’s model of a mid-1930s trailer is also on display, complete with a hinged top that opens to display details such as an upholstered couch and a tiny fake plant.
The 1950s and ’60s were the “Golden Era” of the American road trip, Jones said, when many people had more vacation time, and more disposable income, to travel. “During this time you went west not in a covered wagon, but in your station wagon, and from this post-World War II era of travel we have everything from a 1962 Ford Country Squire station wagon with wood paneling to neon signs that became important beacons to entice travelers to pull off the highway and into the lots of motels, eateries and other attractions and businesses,” she said.
For years, a classic American road trip was along Route 66, the highway that originally ran from Chicago to Los Angeles and now ends in Santa Monica, California. The highway and its history is the focus of “Route 66: The Road and the Romance,” an exhibition that opened on June 8 at the Autry National Center of the American West in Los Angeles celebrating the decommissioned highway as both a road and a romantic notion.
“There are several Route 66 museums actually on the highway that look at the road’s history in that state or region, but we take a national view and look at factors that led to its creation and how it became a fixture in popular culture,” said Jeffrey Richardson, the Autry’s Gamble curator of western history, popular culture and firearms.
Among the 250 objects on display at the Autry are the oldest existing Route 66 shield, a handwritten page from John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” manuscript that introduces the term “Mother Road,” (one of the many nicknames for Route 66), a classic 1960 Corvette and the original 120-foot-long typewritten scroll of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.”
Jack Kerouac’s original On the Road manuscript, written in scroll form.
If you go:
“The American Road” at the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, runs through Sept. 1 and includes special meals in the restaurant and special road-trip themed events.
“Route 66: The Road and the Romance” will be at the Autry National Center of the American West through Jan. 4, 2015, and also includes seminars, tours, family activities, films and more.
(My story about museum exhibits celebrating road trips first appeared on NBC News Travel)
Sometimes you need to leave the airport and get on the highway.
Here are a few more photos from the Route 66 slide show I put together for Bing Travel.
Legendary and large, the Big Texan Steak Ranch is a restaurant and motel complex (for people and horses) best known for its steak dinner challenge. Finish off a 72-ounce steak and a baked potato, salad, dinner roll and shrimp cocktail in an hour – and it’s free. Formerly on Route 66, The Big Texan is now on Interstate 40, just east of Amarillo, Texas.
Of course you wear a seat belt and never text while driving. But no matter your faith – or your driving skills –extra protection on the road can’t hurt. That’s the idea behind the Shrine of Our Lady of the Highways, which has been watching over travelers since 1959.
The shrine is in Raymond, IL. Litchfield, 16 miles south, is home to the Ariston Café, which may be the oldest Route 66 restaurant.
Here’s a sneak peek at the Route 66 slide show I had a little too much fun putting together for Bing travel.
Seat belts on?
The Gemini Giant is the official greeter at the Launching Pad Restaurant in Wilmington, about 60 miles southwest of Chicago. A former fiberglass “muffler man” statue designed to show off an oversized automotive part, the Gemini Giant now wears a pointy space helmet and holds up a rocket ship advertising the restaurant’s name.
The Fanning 66 Outpost is a general store with a taxidermy shop, archery range and wide-range of Route 66 souvenirs. Out front, and impossible to miss at a smidge over 42 feet tall and 20 feet wide, is what the Guinness World Records has declared to be the World’s Largest Rocking Chair.
Hugh Davis built this smiling, 80-foot long blue whale in 1974 as an anniversary present for his wife, Zelta and, not long after, the whale became Catoosa, Oklahoma’s most popular public attraction. The creature fell into disrepair in the 1990s, but it’s been rescued and revived by the Catoosa community.
I’ll circle back with some more kicks from Route 66, but in the meantime, there are lots more photos – and links – back on the Route 66 slide show on Bing.
