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Hop in: We're taking a pop culture road trip on Route 66
A "Route 66" sign is painted on the asphalt near Amboy in the Mojave Desert in California on Feb. 27, 2019.
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Eric Baradat
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AFP via Getty Images
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Route 66 is celebrating 100 years of being the country's most famous highway, an icon of American culture.
As it passes through eight states — from Chicago to Santa Monica, Calif. — its charm is all about driving on the open road, through the plains and prairies, canyons and deserts. Past big cities, cow towns and ghost towns, stopping at roadside motels, retro diners and kitschy tourist traps.
Like every good road trip, Route 66 has a soundtrack — starting with the famous anthem sung by Nat King Cole (and later, his daughter Natalie).
If you ever plan to motor West/
travel my way, take the highway that's the best/
Get your kicks on Route 66…
Bobby Troup, then an aspiring songwriter and jazz pianist, wrote that 1946 song during a road trip he took to California. Over the years, many others have recorded their own versions, including Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters.
It winds from Chicago to L.A/
More than 2,000 miles all the way/
Get your kicks on Route 66…
The famous thoroughfare was created in 1926, and three years later, the Depression hit, followed by the Dust Bowl — when drought and dust storms devastated farmland.
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A family in Pittsburg County, Okla., is forced to leave their home in June 1938 due to a serious drought in the region.
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Dorothea Lange/Keystone/Hulton Archive
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Getty Images
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"The Dust Bowl drove thousands of families away from their farms in the Midwest and southwest states," said Jim Ross, who has written nine books about Route 66. He lives on an original section of the highway. "Most of them headed for California, because that's where the jobs were, or so they thought."
For the Farm Security Administration Project, Dorothea Lange photographed displaced families as they traveled West. The migrants drove in covered jalopies, hitchhiked and walked barefoot with their belongings along the highways.
Route 66 expert Michael Wallis says their trek was heartbreaking — "Following the scent of citrus out to California to rebuild their lives, they were hooked into that old dream, the land of milk and honey, which let them down.
Writer John Steinbeck chronicle the migration along Route 66 - which he named "The Mother Road" — in The Grapes of Wrath.
Steinbeck's 1939 novel won a Pulitzer Prize and was made into a now classic film. It starred Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, an ex-con traveling from Oklahoma with his sharecropper family.
"Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can't eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad," he said in a monologue that would later inspire songwriters Woody Guthrie and Bruce Springsteen.
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And legends of Route 66 shifted gears with the times.
After World War II, cars and Route 66 tourism were heavily marketed. Families began taking road trips around the country. And by the early 1960s, their spirit of adventure was captured by rock and rollers Chuck Berry and The Rolling Stones.
It goes from St. Louis, Joplin, Missouri/
and Oklahoma City looks so pretty./
You'll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico/
Flagstaff, Arizona, don't forget Winona/
Kingsman, Barstow, San Bernardino…
Route 66 was also celebrated by a TV series with the same name, with a theme song by composer and arranger Nelson Riddle. It features two young adventurers who hit the transAmerican highways in a Corvette convertible.
Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in a scene from the 1969 film <em>Easy Rider</em>.
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Bettmann Archive
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Getty Images
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Route 66 was also the scenic road in the 1969 film Easy Rider. It starred Henry Fonda's son Peter, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson as counterculture wanderers who traveled by motorcycle.
"All we represent to them, man, is somebody who needs a haircut," Hopper's character says in one scene, referring to some haters.
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"Oh no," Nicholson's character responds. "What you represent is Freedom.
Into the 21st century
In 1985, Route 66 was officially decommissioned as a federal highway. But its lure endured. Two years later, the English electronic band Depeche Mode made a music video about it.
Won't you get hip to this timely tip?/
And you'll you make that California trip/
Get your kicks on Route 66
The documentary Depeche Mode:101 followed a group of fans traveling across the country on a tour bus. It was an inspiration for reality TV shows in the 1990s: The Real World and Road Rules.
Route 66 was also celebrated in Pixar's 2006 animated movie Cars. With John Meyer's version of the old classic as its theme song, Cars was set in a fictional town along Route 66: Radiator Springs. The popularity of the movie and a sequel led to a theme park attraction, at Disneyland's California Adventure.
A 2012 handout photo provided by Disney Parks shows the Radiator Springs Racers attraction.
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Paul Hiffmeyer
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Disney Parks via Getty Images
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Author Michael Wallis consulted for the Disney Imagineers and the Pixar filmmakers. And he was the voice of the animated sheriff in the movie — a 1949 Mercury Club Coupe police car.
A vintage postcard-style map traces Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles with landmark illustrations along the border, marking the road's 100th anniversary.
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St. Martin's Griffin
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Wallis co-founded the Route 66 Alliance, and is on the highway's Congressional Centennial Commission. The 81-year-old says the road has stirred his imagination ever since he was a child.
"There's a sense of adventure," he said. "If you've not been in a pie palace or greasy spoon on the Mother Road, you don't know what to expect."
Wallis' bestselling 1990 book The Mother Road is credited with sparking a revival of interest in Route 66.
"It's the path connecting two big cities across two thirds of the continent," he said. "People renting you a room, selling you a cheeseburger, a peek at the snake pit. A dream. An illusion. That's what it's all about."
Copyright 2026 NPR
A cat walks past a Route 66 signs at the El Rancho Motel, once a major Route 66 landmark, on June 15, 2007 in Barstow, Calif.
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David McNew
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Getty Images
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