Route 66: Oddities Along The Mother Road_________________________________________________________________ Route 66: Oddities Along The Mother Road was a photographic exhibition at the Foto Galleria, Colne, Lancashire which ran from August to November 2015 and coincided with The Great British Rhythm & Blues Festival. The exhibition featured an eclectic selection of photographs taken on a trip along Route 66, the oddities that made Route 66 so special. I gave a series of talks about the exhibition during the Rhythm & Blues Festival and at several other venues including The Carlisle Blues/Rock Fesival and Upton Blues Festival. |
Route 66 Official Road Emblem, Amboy, Mojave Desert, California Route 66, also colloquially known as the Main Street of America or the Mother Road, was established in 1926 and was one of the original highways within the U.S. Highway System. It became one of the most famous roads in America, beginning in Chicago, Illinois, and running through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona before ending at Santa Monica, California, covering a total of 2,448 miles. Route 66 was officially removed from the Highway System in 1985, after it had been entirely replaced by the Interstate Highway System. However large sections of the original road are still open, so in the words of the 1960s hit song you can still “Get Your Kicks on Route 66”.
Bunyan Statue (Hot Dog Muffler Man), Atlanta, Illinois In the heyday of Route 66, travellers passed hundreds of signs, murals, and other forms of roadside advertising. Among the more famous of these stood fiberglass giants created during the 1960s. Originally designed to hold an axe, the first of these was a “Paul Bunyan” figure, for the Paul Bunyan Cafe in Flagstaff, Arizona. Most of the statues were derivatives of that one mould. Many of them were placed in front of service stations, holding such things as automobile ‘mufflers’ and tyres (becoming known as “Muffler Men” ). One of these giants was originally placed by a restaurant in Cicero, Illinois, swapping the axe for a hotdog, with the business name purposefully miss-spelled as “Bunyons”. Now that the owner has passed away it’s on loan to the town of Atlanta, Illinois as a Route 66 attraction.
Smiley Face Water Tower, Atlanta, Illinois The Smiley Face, that ever-optimistic pop icon from hippy times endures as a public symbol on water towers in many American towns. Usually the tallest structure in a community – the steel water tower – is painted bright yellow, the bulbous top adorned with a pair of black dot eyes and an upturned line – the (un)trademarked, bracketed smile. The Smile Face water tower was a low cost way to radiate sunny greetings to travelers and locals and came to symbolize hope for a better tomorrow. Atlanta is a small Illinois town that put recent effort into promoting itself as a Route 66 destination. In 2003, to celebrate the town’s 150th birthday, the municipal water tower was repainted with a smiley face.
Standard Oil Gas Station, Odell, Illinois This gas station was built in 1932 based on a 1916 Standard Oil design, commonly known as a domestic style gas station. This “house with canopy” style of gas station gave customers a comfortable feeling they could associate with home. The station originally sold Standard Oil products, but later Sinclair and the famous Phillips 66. In the 1940s, a two-bay garage was added for garage repair services, to stay competitive with the nine other stations that occupied the short stretch of Route 66 through Odell. The gas station closed in the late 1970s and in 1997 it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. It was then restored to its former glory by the townspeople of Odell.
Painted Barn Advertising, Cayuga, Illinois Painted barn advertising was once a common sight along Route 66. This barn is in Illinois advertising the Meramec Caverns in Missouri. Barns along Route 66 (and in many other US locations, e.g. Rock City, Chattanooga, Tennessee) were an advertisers delight – ready made structures, mostly in full view close to the road and a source of income for the farmer renting either the roof or sides of his barn The adverts were always simple using large bold lettering with either directions or a route number that travellers could easily see from the road. Of course in the UK we similarly now see trailers adorned with advertising parked in fields alongside our motorways.
Lewis and Clarke Statue, Mississippi River, St Louis, Missouri “The Captain’s Return” statue of explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on the St Louis riverfront, just south of where Route 66 passes over the river. The statue, dedicated in 2006, commemorates the 200th anniversary of the return of the famous explorers from their trip exploring the Missouri River. It is set in the cobblestones of the St Louis Wharf. Now the Mississippi River at this point is subject to notoriously large changes in depth so the statue is frequently submerged (as you can see here it’s half under water). In April 2014 the city decided to move the statue to higher ground. Pity in a way, it was an iconic view of the explorers seemingly waving for help from drowning.
Route 66 Rocker, Fanning 66 Outpost, Cuba, Missouri The Guinness certified world’s largest rocking chair stands 42 feet tall and 20 feet wide at the side of Route 66 adjacent to the Fanning 66 Outpost merchandise store. The chair is able to rock but is kept in a fixed position for safety (only being rocked to meet Guinness’s criteria). You can appreciate the scale of the structure by the houses in the background. It was the idea of Outpost owner Dan Sanazaro – what better way of attracting travellers to his business!
Munger Moss Motel, Lebanon, Missouri Named after the original owner, Nelle Munger and her husband Emmett Moss, this is a real icon of Old Route 66 since the 1940s and still going today, with all mod cons, including free WiFi and special Route 66 themed rooms. Owners Bob and Ramona Lehman have been running the motel continuously since 1971. The neon signage (note the “Free TV” ) was restored in 2010 with help from the National Park Service and other Route 66 historic corridor preservation efforts.
Rest Haven Motel Sign, Afton, Oklahoma The Rest Haven Motel (not surprisingly) has not been open to guests for some time. It is situated on the 1926 alignment of Route 66, on the narrow “Nine-foot Section” or “Ribbon Road” which you can still drive down. Today Afton is a classic example of “Small Town America” with Route 66 along its Main Street of early 1900s buildings, with the shells of vintage motels, hotels and Gas Stations. Afton had two railroads, built in 1871 and 1901 together with a railway repair shop so the town flourished with farming and railroad activities. However the repair shop closed in the 1930s and a new highway was built and completed in 1957: Interstate 44. It bypassed the town and relegated it to oblivion.
Tractor Seats, Farm and Ranch Museum, Elk City, Oklahoma One of five museums in the Elk City Old Town Museum Complex which also includes the National Transportation Museum, the Farm and Ranch Museum, the Old Town Museum and the National Route 66 Museum. The museum, which is sponsored by the Western Oklahoma Historical Society, opened in 1998 and relates to the agricultural heritage of farming and ranching in the area. As well as a collection of old tractors and a large collection of all types of barbed wire there is huge collection of tractor seats, as the photograph shows.
Painted Storage Building, Pasture alongside Route 66, West Texas Panhandle Many barns and storage buildings along Route 66 are painted red, because red paint is cheap and plentiful. Why is red paint cheap and plentiful, because of nuclear fusion and dying stars, seriously – look it up on the Smithsonian Institute website. This storage building alongside Route 66 was painted so beautifully, clearly the farmer has another career option as an artist.
The Tower Conoco Gas Station, Shamrock, Texas The magnificent art deco ‘Tower’ Conoco gas station looks exactly as it did during its heyday, complete with the U Drop Inn Cafe signage to the right of the photo. Immaculately restored by the city of Shamrock, but sadly no longer selling gas or food, it’s a sort of Taj Mahal of Texas gas stations, originally built in 1935 when times were hard. It would have been the first ‘foreign’ station encountered by migrants from Oklahoma heading west down Route 66 on their famous exodus from the Dust Bowl.
Devil’s Rope Barbed Wire Museum, McLean, Texas The museum opened in 1991 and is dedicated to the history of barbed wire, fencing tools and ranching heritage. It features exhibits and collections from private wire collectors, salesmen samples, warfare wire, a reference library of the largest collection of published material concerning barbed wire, a dust bowl exhibit, and a collection of road lore with artifacts dedicated to the Texas portion of Route 66. Today, more than 450 patents exist for barbed wire and more than 2,000 types and variations of barbed wire have been recorded.
Britten Water Tower, Groom, Texas Adjacent to Interstate 40 (Old Route 66) in Groom, Texas, there’s a large leaning water tower. Originally it was a functional water tower that fell into disuse but was saved from demolition and re-sited to serve as a sign for a truck stop and information centre. The disused and boarded up truck stop can still be seen set back off the road behind the tower. Many Route 66 travellers think the tower’s angle is due to having “one leg shorter than the others.” However, the true reason is that the tower’s central water conduit, intended to lead below ground, is longer than any of the legs, and, since it was never permanently installed in the ground, causes the structure to lean.
Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo, Texas A public art installation created in 1974 in open fields alongside I-40/Route 66. It consists of what were (when originally installed in 1974) ten either older running used or junk Cadillac automobiles, representing a number of evolutions of the carline (most notably the birth and death of the defining feature of mid twentieth century Cadillacs – the tailfins) from 1949 to 1963, half buried nose-first in the ground, at an angle corresponding to that of the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt. The visitor is encouraged to write graffiti on or spray-paint the vehicles, which are periodically restored to their original colours to provide a fresh canvas for future visitors.
Blues Swallow Motel, Tucumcari, New Mexico A 12-unit L-shaped motel listed on the National Register of Historic Places in New Mexico as a part of historic Route 66. Original architectural features included a façade with pink stucco walls decorated with shell designs and a stepped parapet, on-site office and manager’s residence and garages located between the sleeping units for travellers to park their cars. Built in 1939 it was updated in 1958 with neon signage proclaiming “TV” and “100% Refrigerated Air”. The motel remains in operation today, benefiting from various associations keeping the old highway alive. The “100% Refrigerated Air” signage was used in the Pixar film ‘Cars’.
Route 66 Auto Museum, Santa Rosa, New Mexico The Route 66 Auto Museum in Santa Rosa is a fine example of many auto museums along Route 66. It has over 30 lovingly restored antique and vintage automobiles plus an assortment of hotrods, motorcycles, bicycles, and Route 66 memorabilia. Museum owner Bozo Cordova does all the restorations and runs the garage next door.
Chevrolet Tail Fin, Route 66 Auto Museum, Santa Rosa, New Mexico The tailfin era of automobile styling encompassed the 1950s and 1960s, peaking between 1957 and 1960. It was a style that spread worldwide, as car designers picked up styling trends from the US automobile industry where it was the golden epoch of American autodesign. General Motors design chief Harley Earl is generally credited for the automobile tailfin, introducing small fins on the 1948 Cadillac. Here was have the tailfin off a 1957 Chevrolet Belair 2 door Hardtop lovingly restored and displayed in the Route 66 Auto Museum, Santa Rosa, New Mexico.
El Malplais National Monument, Grants, New Mexico The lava fllows, cinder cones and other volcanic features make up El Malpais (from the Spanish term for ‘badlands’) a volcanically active area on the southeast margin of the Colorado Plateau. Seen here from a sandstone bluff with fantastic wind hewn rock formations it’s a ‘must see’ landscape with the El Malplais Ranger Station just 9 miles south of I-40/Route 66.
Chief Yellowhorse Trading Post, Lupton, Arizona / New Mexico border This is one of many Indian trading ports along Route 66, particularly in the Navajo Nation Reservation which covers an area in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. It’s in a spectacular location with painted cliffs rising directly behind the trading post. Large statues have been erected high up on the cliff’s ledges of the animal and bird species that frequent the area. The State border of Arizona and New Mexico runs directly through the trading post (they have painted a red line across the floor). Interestingly sales taxes at the trading post are paid to the Navajo Nation and not Arizona or New Mexico.
Petrified Forest National Park, Navajo and Apache Counties, Arizona Named after its large deposits of petrified wood, the park covers about 146 square miles, encompassing semi-desert shrub plain as well as highly eroded and colourful badlands (wilderness). Situated north and south of I-40 / Route 66 (east of Holbrook) with the northern part extending into the Painted Desert it was declared a national monument in 1906 and a national park in 1962. The park is known for its fossils, especially fallen trees that lived in the late Triassic period, about 225 million years ago. Now a protected national park and tourist attraction, theft of petrified wood remains a problem. Visitors may have their cars manually searched on exit.
Wigwam Motel, Holbrook, Arizona Built by Chester E. Lewis in 1950 the motel, known as ” Wigwam Village No. 6″ (there were 6 other villages of which only 3 remain), is located on Route 66, arranged as a square with 15 concrete and steel wigwams, each having a main room, a bathroom with sink, toilet and shower but no telephone, Internet access or ice machine. Vintage restored automobiles are located throughout the parking area. The Lewis family continue to run and maintain the village which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2002. Interestingly the structures are in fact representing ‘tipis’ (a conical tent made of animal skins) not “wigwams” (a shelter of bark layered on a pole structure) – a common mistake.
Jack Rabbit Trading Post, Joseph City, Arizona A convenience store and curio shop located just off I-40/ Route 66, five miles west of Joseph City, Arizona. The trading post hails from Route 66’s glory days, and is currently in operation. With a large fiberglass jackrabbit that can be mounted (for pictures), the facility is a major Route 66 attraction. It was famous for numerous billboards up and down Route 66 (and in some other locations) which had the silhouette of a jackrabbit and the distance from the sign to the trading post. The photo shows the “HERE IT IS” billboard in front of the store on Old Route 66. The Pixar cartoon film ‘Cars’ feature the trading post’s ‘HERE IT IS’ signage with the jackrabbit replaced by a Model T Ford.
Highway Diner. Winslow, Arizona This 9-stool ‘Valentine’ diner was installed around 1946. It was called “Irene’s Diner” and “Monday’s Diner” for some time before reverting to its original name. The diner closed around 2005 and has been vacant since then. In 2008, the diner was awarded a grant for restoration. The Valentine diner was designed by Arthur Valentine as an 8-10 seat diner which could be operated by just two people. Ordering the diner through a catalogue, the little square-sided structures were easily delivered on flatbed railroad cars. Inside, stools were placed around a counter. Arriving complete with grill, counter and stools, the operation could be unloaded, set upon a concrete slab, and be operational within hours.
Meteor City Trading Post, Winslow, Arizona Meteor City was built in 1938, adopting a name to capitalise on a Meteor Crater nearby. The original trading post had a conventional rectangular building but in 1979 it was replaced with this eye-catching dome. The geodesic dome design was not the only feature to attract tourists. On the east side of the dome famed Route 66 artist Bob Waldmire painted a 100-foot long map of the old road. There are also six tipis surrounding the dome, a 12 foot ‘dream catcher’ (reputed to be the world’s largest), and fragments of petrified wood no doubt ‘borrowed’ from the nearby Petrified Forest National Park.
Winona Bridge, Winona, Arizona Winona, a small unincorporated community just 13 miles east of Flagstaff, Arizona. Once a key Route 66 road-stop made famous in the Bobby Troup song “Route 66”, deliberately out-of-sequence with the rest of the cities named in the song because of its near-miss: ‘Don’t forget Winona’, which conveniently rhymed with ‘Arizona’. The bridge, a typical ‘truss’ bridge quite common along Route 66, originally carrying Route 66 traffic is now closed, by-passed by the local Townsend Winona Road and more significantly Interstate I-40 just up on the ridge.
Hackberry General Store & Visitors Centre, Hackberry, Arizona Hackberry General Store is a museum off old Route 66 and has been called the “mother lode of mother road memorabilia”. No gas is sold but vintage pumps stand outside They have a vintage diner, selling Route 66 Beer (root beer), a service garage displaying a Model T flatbed truck, along with many cars of more recent vintage. In the yard there are many nostalgic tin signs including Berma-Shave road signs, all kinds of Route 66 memorabilia and outside speakers playing jukebox classics. Berma-Shave was an American brand of shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small sequential roadside signs.
Roy’s Motel & Cafe, Amboy, Mojave Desert, California Founded in 1938 by Roy Crowl, it comprises a motel, cafe, gas and service station and is situated at the tiny ghost town of Amboy in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Roy’ son-in-law Buster Burris originally brought power to Amboy and Roy’s motel from the town of Barstow, some 80 miles away by erecting his own poles and wires along Route 66 using an old Studebaker pickup truck. The still functioning gas station, rest rooms and cafe are a very welcome sight after driving across the Mojave desert. Because of it’s remoteness and desert backdrop it is a favoured film location. Today Roy’s and the town of Amboy are owned and under the stewardship of a private preservationist.
Summit Inn Cafe, Oak Hills, California The original Summit Inn cafe was in operation in 1928, taking its name from its original location at the summit of the Cajon Pass, Southern California. The present location in Oak Hills has been in operation since 1952 when Route 66 was rerouted along a somewhat lower elevation. The vintage building which once served as a Texaco gas station remains on the property, although gasoline is no longer sold there. The Summit Inn’s small gift shop sells Texaco-related memorabilia and a great many original metal oil company signs decorate the rest of the interior. Other signs include two circa 1939 Standard Oil signs featuring Mickey Mouse and a genuine US 66 highway shield.
Beach Volleyball, Santa Monica, California Famed beachfront city on the borders of Los Angeles, Santa Monica has been a resort town and beach playground since the early 20th century. Beach volleyball was first developed here during the 1920s and of course now has worldwide popularity. In 1922 permanent nets were erected on the beach for playing recreational games on public parts of the beach and in private clubs, and even today permanent poles and nets are maintained on the beach year-round. The Santa Monica Pier is the final destination of Route 66.
About Route 66 Route 66, also colloquially known as the Main Street of America or the Mother Road, was one of the original highways within the U.S. Highway System. Route 66 was established in 1926 and officially removed from the Highway System in 1985, after it had been replaced in its entirety by the Interstate Highway System. Route 66, which became one of the most famous roads in America, originally ran from Chicago, Illinois, through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona before ending at Santa Monica, California, covering a total of 2,448 miles.. It was of course recognized in popular culture by the hit song “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” in the 1960s. Route 66 served as a major path for those who migrated west, especially during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and it supported the economies of the communities through which the road passed. People doing business along the route became prosperous due to the growing popularity of the highway, and those same people later fought to keep the highway alive in the face of the growing threat of being bypassed by the new Interstate Highway System. Route 66 underwent many improvements and realignments over its lifetime, Portions of the road that passed through Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico, and Arizona have been designated a National Scenic Byway given the name “Historic Route 66”, which is returning to some maps. Several states have adopted significant bypassed sections of the former US 66 into the state road network as State Route 66. About The Trip A few years ago I was chatting to a photographer friend about Route 66 and how we both had a lifetime passion to take that famous trip. Well we decided to go, so we planned it to coincide with the Chicago Blues Festival. Indeed our plan was to fly to Los Angeles, hire a car and drive Route 66 the ‘wrong way round’, i.e. from L.A. to Chicago, arriving in Chicago the day before the blues festival was due to start. Many weeks of planning ensued to make sure we took in as much as possible en route. This meant a four week drive with plenty of free time to explore towns and attractions along the way. Well, we did the trip, everything went to schedule and we arrived in Chicago on the Thursday just in time to attend the opening ceremony of the blues festival at Buddy Guy’s Legend Club. Our trip covered the entire 2,448 miles of Route 66, plus quite a few small detours along the way, taking in all the roadside attractions, motels, gas stations, diners, museums, advertising signage, and a variety of other ‘oddities’ unique to the most famous road in America, if not the world. Of course it’s not possible to drive the whole of old Route 66 and various sections have now closed, due to worn out road surfaces, unsafe bridges or just that the original road has now been built over by the new Interstate road system. Whilst the original route started to decay after it was de-classified as a US Highway Route in the 1980s, there have since been many associations, local communities and individuals in the eight states that host the route that have restored various old buildings and attractions to keep the magic of the Mother Road alive. Extracts from the Exhibition Comments Book
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