Though it no longer carries travelers across the nation the way it once did, Route 66 remains America's highway. "America's Main Street" spawned popular songs—"Get Your Kicks on Route 66"—and helped to define the culture of the American automobile in its heyday, the 1940s through the 1960s. The escape from reality embodied by the "open road" defined Route 66, and nostalgia continues to imbue the road and road culture with symbolic significance.

From the outset, planners endowed U.S. 66 with a nationalistic goal: to connect the main streets of rural and urban communities along its course. Entrepreneurs Cyrus Avery of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and John Woodruff of Springfield, Missouri, originally conceived of a road to link Chicago to Los Angeles, but more than their efforts were needed to kick off such a massive roadbuilding project. Legislation for public highways first appeared in 1916, but it was not until Congress enacted an...