The Brief

One of America’s most iconic roads is turning 100 this year: Route 66.

Affectionately known as the Mother Road, the historic route idealized ‘getting your kicks’ on a road trip and driving West with the top down. The aspirational ideal of Southern California probably wouldn’t be the same without it, with Route 66 ending at the ultimate sunny destination: the Pacific Ocean.

But beyond the nostalgia, the Main Street of America has another history: a path for migration to the West. Black Americans used it to escape the South during the Jim Crow era, but for them, it was far from a dreamy getaway drive. It’s part of the dark underbelly of Route 66.

Route 66 history 

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed the famed Hollyhock House, once described Route 66 as a “giant chute, down which everything loose in this country is sliding into Southern California.” He was right. Route 66 was, in some ways, a perfect road.

Built in 1926, just before the Great Depression, the path was southern enough to avoid the snow and open all-year round. Crossing eight states and over 2,000 miles, it was designed to link rural communities as far away as Illinois to Southern California.

It was the first highway in the country to be fully-paved in 1938 — a luxury at the time — making it vital to trucking companies and commercial trade. And soon after it also took on a military role. After the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, the U.S. government decided the Pacific Coast needed more protection, so it invested billions of dollars and moved thousands of military members to California. A desert training facility was also established along the road.

Migration on the Mother Road

The road was also useful for people going on vacations or visiting family. However, its role in migration might be the most influential. Route 66 became an escape route during urgent moments of need, for both Black and white families. Author and cultural documentarian Candacy Taylor has studied Black travel and Route 66 extensively. She said white families used it as a means to get away.

“It became this route for mostly white Americans escaping poverty… [or] the stock market crash in Chicago,” Taylor said. “These men were just saying, ‘well, we’ll just leave and we’ll go to California where it’s better.’ So, the route became this really important method to find salvation for white folks.”

A section of Route 66 near Prewitt, New Mexico in 2003. Rita Powdrell and her sister ended up taking Route 66 a second time to migrate to New Mexico for college.

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For Black Americans, it was about fleeing the crushing prejudice of Jim Crow laws in the South. Taylor said depending where you lived, there were three main paths to take. If you were around the East Coast, you’d likely follow the coast up to New York. If you were in the Mid-South, like Alabama, you’d take the railway up to Chicago.

If you were closer to the West coast, such as Texas, you’d head to Los Angeles, making Route 66 one of the best ways to get out. But it was also highly dangerous.

Racism on Route 66

Rita Powdrell is the 79-year-old director of the African American Museum and Cultural Center of New Mexico. But when she was 16, in 1963, Powdrell got her first taste of the West — and Route 66. Her family traveled to California so her father could attend a National Medical Association conference in L.A.

“We took a week to get to L.A. and we camped all the way to Arizona because my father didn’t want to encounter the segregated hotels and motels that you find along the way,” she said. “He wanted to make sure we’d have a safe space to spend the night when we stopped.”

She remembered they camped on national parkland, and that it was her sister’s job to check all the parks to make sure they had toilets instead of outhouses. Powdrell recalled how cold it was camping, seeing beautiful forests, taking in the smells of the outdoors and her mother cooking over a charcoal fire.

She didn’t realize why the family was camping at the time — which felt like a vacation — but Powdrell said she learned about it later on.

It wasn’t just the segregated hotels that needed to be avoided. Route 66 went through a lot of sundown towns, white communities which prohibited Black people from staying after sunset. If you found yourself in one of these towns after dark, Taylor said it wouldn’t be good.

“There was usually either some kind of sign that said ‘N-word don’t let the sun set on you here’, or they would ring a bell at 6 p.m. because,” she said, “Black people who were working in the towns, that was their cue… to leave, because you shouldn’t be there.”

At best you’d be harassed for staying and escorted to the border, according to Taylor. At worst, your life would be at risk. Sundown towns were known for bigoted people who would carry out beatings, lynchings and other serious threats.

“ Given that 44 of the 89 counties on Route 66 were sundown towns, traveling Route 66 was like a minefield,” Taylor said.

The Green Book

Black travelers had to plan ahead, just like Powdrell’s father. You’d have to bring your own supplies on long drives, like cans to urinate in, extra lunch boxes for meals and bedding to sleep in. It was fairly common for Black drivers to crash on Route 66 as well. According to Taylor, the NAACP told a local newspaper that the crashes were happening because sleep-deprived drivers couldn’t find a place to sleep.

This is where the Green Book came in. It was essentially a national Black Yellow Pages, a key for survival. The travel guide was written by postal carrier Victor Hugo Green for Black folks to find safe places to visit. You could find welcoming communities and things like rest stops, restaurants, gas stations and even real estate offices. While there were multiple Black travel guides, the Green Book was the longest-running and most well-known, published between 1936 and 1967.

“As far as movement, the freedom to move comfortably from one space to another,” Powdrell said, “I think that’s what the Green Book gives African Americans.” She doesn’t know if her father used it on their trip, but Powdrell said it helped people avoid discrimination — like she experienced traveling.

As her family got closer to California, they stopped camping and began to look for motels. Her father thought they’d be fine the closer they got to the coast.

“I remember us going from motel to motel and they would have the vacancy sign out and as soon as my dad would walk in, they would say, ‘oh, we just rented the last room. We’re so sorry.’” she said. “That happened a few times and I could feel the anxiety of my parents because it’s night, they hadn’t planned on camping anywhere.”

Once they reached Barstow in California, it became crystal clear the progressive state in the 1960s wasn’t immune to racism. It was a hot day, so Powdrell and her sister wanted to swim in the hotel pool.

“ We run down to the pool, we get in and all the other guests get out of the pool as soon as we get in,” she recalled.

Since Powdrell was a teenager, she was old enough to know of racism but still hadn’t yet experienced it like she did on this trip. Growing up, her father was the first African American doctor in the Pennsylvania state hospital system. They were the only Black children in an all-white environment. She said because of that her perception of prejudice and segregation was a little skewed.

“When I’m traveling, I’m really thinking that the country is a more accepting place than it is,” she said. “So the type of treatment we start to get as we travel Route 66 — I don’t know how to explain it, but it floods you with an immense sense of shaming. That there’s something wrong with you. That you’re not allowed into these spaces.”

Today, Powdrell admires her father for coming up with an enjoyable camping experience, despite the circumstances. She said it’s another sign of the “sovereign resilience” of Black Americans to resist restrictions on movement, a cornerstone of segregation.

The end of Route 66

Route 66’s demise came with the creation of the Interstate Highway system, through the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956.

The interstate was designed to be straight and fast, a superior alternative to Route 66, which intentionally wound through remote towns. Because it was straight, the speed limit was higher, so people could even drive faster.

In L.A. County, the 10 Freeway took the place of Route 66, opening in Santa Monica in the 1960s. The route was ultimately decommissioned in 1985 and removed from the U.S. highway system.

The 10 Freeway west of the East Los Angeles Interchange on March 20, 2026.

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The building of the freeway system often cut through Black neighborhoods, said D’Artagnan Scorza, executive director of racial equity for L.A. County.

“The thing about Route 66 in particular is that while it opened the door for western migration, the freeways built in L.A. undermined a lot of the gains that Black communities made,” Scorza said.

He pointed to Sugar Hill in West Adams, a once wealthy Black neighborhood in L.A. County that was split in half by the 10 Freeway’s construction. That, along with redlining and urban renewal, meant Black and brown communities did not have the political power to fight back, he said.

And now, Black communities are leaving the metropolitan areas where they initially gathered, like South L.A. According to Michael Stoll, a professor of public policy and urban planning at UCLA, families are increasingly moving to places like the Inland Empire and Antelope Valley largely because of housing costs and gentrification.

While transit is just one part of systemic issues facing Southern California, Route 66 is an example of how roads are never just roads. Over 100 years, it’s redefined the West and influenced what happens to communities.

Casa Leo is a small Spanish restaurant located in Los Feliz near Griffith Park, where Chef Joshua Whigham is quietly bringing his own fresh approach to Spanish cooking — one that's specific and ingredient-driven in a way you'd be hard-pressed to find anywhere else in the city.

Whigham spent 15 years working under José Andrés — the Michelin-starred, James Beard Award-winning Spanish chef — before striking out on his own a little over a year ago with Casa Leo. The restaurant has already been added to the Michelin Guide California and has built a reputation for a seasonal, genuine, personal approach. That shows up across the menu, from cocas (Iberian flatbreads) to a trout en escabeche dish inspired by Martín Berasategui, the Basque chef often credited as a pioneer of modern Spanish cuisine.

Paella drop

One Sunday each month, Whigham hosts a "paella drop," cooking the paella outside the restaurant on a propane rig built to fit the giant pan he uses. Originally open to just 20 guests, the pop-up has grown in popularity as word has spread — Whigham has incrementally raised the cap over time, and now cooks with an even larger pan that can accommodate up to 70 guests.

It’s a setup that gets a lot of attention. He recalls a group of cyclists zipping by one day, with one of them yelling, "Holy shit, that smells good."

Chef Joshua Whigham stands beside the finished paella, cooked on a custom propane rig large enough to hold his oversized pan.

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"Paella is Spain's national dish," Whigham says — and for many Americans, it's the only regional dish they know by name. Most Americans picture one version of paella — chicken, shrimp, saffron-yellow rice — but the dish looks different depending on where in Spain you are. While the dish has roots in the southeastern region of Valencia, its ingredients and preparation vary widely throughout the country.

Showcasing that variety is one of Whigham’s aims. And he does it with strict adherence to tradition — he'll never include chorizo, since its heavy smoke and paprika flavors, he says, completely overpower the subtle, delicate taste of the saffron, broth and rice.

In August, the paella included market mushrooms, summer truffle, chicken and langoustine.

The next drop, on Sept. 20 (which just so happens to be World Paella Day), is a cuttlefish (sepia) paella.

Whigham wanted the drops to serve as an opportunity to activate the space in ways beyond regular brunch and dinner service.

Not a tourist menu

Whigham says people's exposure to Spanish cuisine often stops at gazpacho, jamón, and that one paella experience they had while studying abroad in college.

His approach, honed over almost two decades of cooking Spanish food, involves first surveying a dish's regional origins and then adapting it using Southern California ingredients, in a process Whigham calls "giving a traditional dish a sense of place."

"That's the path I'm on — taking traditional dishes and making them ours,” he adds.

A plated portion of Casa Leo's paella, served with a side of aioli and topped with edible flowers and microgreens.

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For example: marmitako, a humble Basque fisherman's dish traditionally made with tuna and potato, with a base consisting of tomato, bell pepper, red onion and fish stock. Whigham noticed poblano peppers were "exploding at the market" and swapped them in for the green bell peppers, using the same process and proportions — resulting in a richer tone, more of a capsicum flavor and a "nice low-key heat." Paired with the chili de árbol spice, it made the dish "warmer and richer and a little deeper in flavor."

Less than two years in, Whigham says the Michelin recognition was a lovely surprise. "We weren't looking for it," he says. "This is what I do. I don't know how to do anything else but this."

Still, he feels the weight of its importance: "A good restaurant, you feel it — the pulse of it, the heartbeat. That's what I want for people."

Voters in November will decide whether to make a sales tax increase, geared toward funding public safety, maintenance and youth programs, permanent.

In 2018, voters approved a 1.5% sales tax increase — dubbed Measure X. That rate was designed to decrease to 1% in 2029 before being eliminated in 2039. The tax provides more than $80 million in annual revenue. City officials said the tax dollars account for about 20% of the general fund.

LAist breaks down where those dollars have gone so far.

How much money has come in through the tax? 

The city has received nearly $500 million from the sales tax so far.

A large portion of the Measure X money — $166 million — went to “unrestricted” general revenue purposes. This is anything from building repairs and city events to arts programs and City Council aides.

The second-highest expense — sitting at nearly $123 million — went to public safety, which includes retaining firefighters and police officers.

Nearly $69 million falls under the third category called “Maintain Effective 9-1-1 Response,” and most of those dollars went to the Santa Ana Police Department.

About $57 million went toward addressing homelessness since 2019. Records show a large share of that money went to police response — about $48 million.

In the other categories, $14 million went to fix streets, $39 million to park maintenance and $12 million went to youth services.

You can find the full breakdown of Measure X dollars here.

General spending is the largest pot of money

Tim Johnson, chair of the Measure X Citizen Oversight Committee, said the tricky part of the sales tax is that it is general-purpose, unrestricted revenue, meaning the city can spend it however it sees best for residents.

“I don't know that all the voters understood that this truly is unrestricted revenue that's coming in though, and that's kind of probably the biggest issue,” Johnson told LAist. “The city, I think, is trying to do our best to let our residents know where the dollars are being spent. But it's a virtually impossible task to be able to track every single dollar that comes in and where it exactly is going because of this unrestricted general revenue.”

It’s especially an issue considering the ballot language led with firefighters, police, homelessness and youth — all categories that mean a lot to Santa Ana residents, Johnson added.

“That is the category that gets the bulk of this funding, and yet it was at probably the back end of most of our voters' [minds] when they were casting their ballot,” Johnson said. “And probably the same thing with the upcoming election. It's important to understand that this truly is unrestricted revenue.”

With this tax, he said, residents are putting a lot of trust in the City Council, city manager and finance department to be good fiduciaries of these funds.

“We're not only voting for the additional tax on ourselves, but we're voting to put our trust in the City Council that they're going to spend it wisely,” Johnson added.

Why it matters

Before the sales tax was approved in 2018, the city adopted a budget that required a $10 million dip in its reserves to maintain city services. At the time, the city was facing a growing structural deficit that, if ignored, could have ballooned to more than $30 million by 2020, according to city records.

Despite revenue generated from Measure X, the city has faced multimillion-dollar budget deficits in recent years.

This year, the city managed to close a $13 million deficit by making cuts across several departments, including police, public works, and parks and recreation.

Without the sales tax dollars, officials have warned that the city will have deeper cuts to make.

“The residents of Santa Ana have come to expect a certain level of service from the city that is largely dependent on Measure X dollars,” Mai Do, a Santa Ana resident and member of the Measure X Citizen Oversight Committee, told LAist. “So many of the services that we depend on and enjoy, including community improvements to parks and also library personnel, are funded through Measure X.”

Other cities, including Orange and San Clemente, are looking to voters for approval of their own sales tax measures to help bolster city coffers. Do said Santa Ana luckily is not panicking as much as other cities.

“Folks are expecting more from their local governments … in terms of providing services to everyone,” Do said. “When there's an expectation of having these services, cities need to be able to figure out how to actually meet that demand.”

What’s next? 

Santa Ana voters will be asked in November to make the sales tax permanent. If the measure fails, the tax rate will drop to 1% in 2029 as originally planned, meaning the city could miss out on about $30 million in revenue.

An astronaut who made news piloting a NASA spacecraft around the moon earlier this year is now planting his feet on the ground on the Central Coast.

Victor Glover is joining the executive staff at his alma mater, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He’ll serve as an advisor to the university’s president and help shape research programs.

Glover graduated from Cal Poly in 1999 with an engineering degree. He was also on the football and wrestling teams.

Glover also met his wife, Dionna, while attending the school. All four of their daughters graduated from, or are currently attending, Cal Poly.

Glover was a Navy fighter pilot who became an important part of America’s modern-day space program. He lived on the International Space Station for 168 days, flew the SpaceX Crew Dragon, and piloted NASA’s Artemis II lunar orbit mission earlier this year.

Glover recently retired from the Navy and NASA.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

California regulators ordered Health Net to fix how it’s handling the termination of assisted living services for low-income residents after the insurer’s abrupt decision left patients and providers scrambling. The state’s corrective action plan requires Health Net to extend services for all members until the end of the year, rather than stopping some as soon as October.

Health Net, one of the largest Medicaid insurers in the country, notified providers several months ago that it was ending its assisted living and home care services contracts. The services are optional under Medi-Cal — California’s version of Medicaid — meaning an insurer can decide annually whether it will continue coverage. Providers and family members said they got little or no warning, leaving them confused and panicked about finding other arrangements.

In an August letter to Health Net, the Department of Health Care Services cited eight deficiencies in the insurer’s handling of the change, including failure to submit transition plans for members, failure to move members to other medically appropriate care, and denying services to members. Regulators wrote that violations “jeopardize member safety, disrupt continuity of care, and endanger medically vulnerable members.”

If Health Net does not extend benefits and create individualized transition plans for each affected member, the state may fine them $25,000 per member per day of violation, the letter states.

Advocates and providers estimate about 3,500 Medi-Cal patients rely on Health Net to pay for assisted living costs. Most are elderly, and many have cognitive issues like dementia. Health Net operates Medi-Cal plans in 10 counties: Amador, Calaveras, Fresno, Inyo, Los Angeles, Mono, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Tulare.

In a statement to CalMatters, Health Net spokesperson Beatriz Lopez said the company still plans to end the services next year, but will now cover all members through the end of the year.

“Health Net and DHCS share a commitment to advancing the health and well-being of Medi-Cal members,” Lopez said.

Health Net has previously told CalMatters the assisted living benefit “has not led to better care” in terms of fewer emergency room visits or days hospitalized. The benefit is part of CalAIM, a broad state initiative to improve Medi-Cal services and save money by stabilizing high-cost users who frequently end up in emergency rooms. Lopez said Health Net would continue analyzing data and supporting services that result in better health outcomes.

Providers confirmed to CalMatters that their contracts would run through the end of the year.

Thousands still face January deadline

Hagar Dickman, director of long-term services and supports at Justice In Aging, said the state’s corrective action plan resolves the immediate crisis but fails to address the long-term problem: “Thousands of older Californians are still set to lose their housing on January 1st.”

Allowing health insurers to cancel housing-related benefits creates problems, Dickman said, because most assisted living residents have no other home to return to. Additionally, the Department of Health Care Services has stated that if a member moves to another insurer that still covers assisted living, continuity of care protections would no longer apply, meaning the new insurer might not approve the member's assisted living costs.

"It’s disingenuous to say there are protections and then say the protections don’t apply,” Dickman said. "So the option is skilled nursing or homelessness.”

Pauline Shatara, deputy director of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, agreed that state protections are inadequate.

“It doesn’t sound like we found a solution to help pay for these people to remain where they are,” Shatara said.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.