Annual Route 66 Fun Run

[Guest Jim_Edwards]

Anyone else thinking of making the annual Route 66 Fun run the first weekend in May, 2012?

It's not a function of any club, but a heck of a lot of fun and an opportunity to revisit the Mother Road as it existed before I-40.

http://www.azrt66.com/

Edited November 7, 2011 by Jim_Edwards (see edit history)

[John_Maine]

I would love to do this some day, but not next year.

[Guest Jim_Edwards]

I would love to do this some day, but not next year.

John when you decide to go just keep in mind that hotel/motel rooms in the area can sell out literally months in advance. Reservations convenient to the scheduled events can start getting dicey by early February.

[mrspeedyt]

and hopefully the dates of the fun run is a week different than the river run.

[Guest Jim_Edwards]

and hopefully the dates of the fun run is a week different than the river run.

The Laughlin River Run is the weekend before the Route 66 Fun run. That will give all the folks in Oatman time to dispose of all the Coors and Bud Lite containers........

[Guest Julian]

John when you decide to go just keep in mind that hotel/motel rooms in the area can sell out literally months in advance. Reservations convenient to the scheduled events can start getting dicey by early February.

Dont this just suck the fun out of the idea

[Guest Jim_Edwards]

John when you decide to go just keep in mind that hotel/motel rooms in the area can sell out literally months in advance. Reservations convenient to the scheduled events can start getting dicey by early February.

Dont this just suck the fun out of the idea

Not nearly as much fun as unexpectedly discovering you're there with no place to sleep other than the car or hoping you can find a motel within 150 miles. The experience is more than worth the trouble of doing a bit of planning ahead a couple of months.

[Guest studepeople]

Hello Jim ; I live near the city that started the "Mother Road "Springfield Mo. . Around 1926 I believe. It could be hard to stay at the "Historical" motels and or hotels on the route, but the major cities will have rooms all year round. You just have to seek them out. If a few people wanted to travel the "Route" together they should try to book rooms now. Buy a "tour" book as a guide. We have been on the "Road" with our old car may times and it is a lot of fun even if you can't do the whole "Route at on time.......good luck

[Guest Jim_Edwards]

Cyrus Avery from Tulsa, Oklahoma, by way of Pennsylvania and Missouri, is considered the Father of Route 66 which was officially designated as a U.S. Highway in 1926 upon the passage of the Federal Highway Act in November of 1926. Route 66 underwent many alignment changes from the original route of 1926 and the advent of what we now call the Interstate Highway system was begun in 1956. (The term Interstate Highways was actually applied to those highways having a Federal designation after 1926)

In 1926 the focus of the Federal Highway system was provide for the movement of farm products to market and the movement of Mail; which is why many of the alignments of all the 1926 designated U.S. Highways later saw alignment changes to make routes shorter by taking the "kinks" out of them. Most of the original alignments sought to connect together a somewhat patchwork of existing state maintained roads, many of which were not even paved with gravel. It took to the mid 1930s for the most traveled U.S. highways to be of a "hard" surface of either concrete or asphalt. Believe it or not there were still U.S. highways in the early 1950's with sections paved with only gravel.

[Guest studepeople]

Thankyou; You forgot to mention that a man from Springfield Mo. was also involved with this process of making this road possible.....John Woodruff ........as to where the number route 66 came from do you know that?

[Guest studepeople]

Jim : I just went on Wikipedia and found out that ...Sprinfield was the first City to use the route 66 on April 30 1926 ,that in 1927 that Route 66 became signed into law as one of the first US Highways....So please look on Wikipedia.org wiki/us-route66..... as to the man who started the thinking for the Highway in general ... I never argued with that

[Guest Jim_Edwards]

Jim : I just went on Wikipedia and found out that ...Sprinfield was the first City to use the route 66 on April 30 1926 ,that in 1927 that Route 66 became signed into law as one of the first US Highways....So please look on Wikipedia.org wiki/us-route66..... as to the man who started the thinking for the Highway in general ... I never argued with that

No, and either was I. It was simply an observation and statement of fact which should have included Woodward as he and Avery were apparently in lockstep from the very outset.

Actually the claim by the City of Springfield and the State of Missouri may be just capitalizing on happenstance after the fact once U.S. 66 gained all its notoriety, which is certainly okay. The happenstance resulting from a meeting of ASHTO in Springfield and ending the apparently somewhat contentious long term argument over the route of the not yet formally determined or designated by the formal adopting the route from Chicago. The ongoing argument had been over the route from or to Springfield as to whether it would begin in Chicago or follow what came to be designated as U.S. 60 to Norfolk, Va. It seems many States wanted the prestige of being on a Coast to Coast highway. At one point the calling of the route U.S. 62 was supposedly even bandied about.

As for the actual naming of Route 66 that was determined in April of 1926 in an agreement between Cyrus Avery and then head of the Missouri State Highway Dept., one Mr Piepmeier. However, without the adoption of the route from Chicago in the Springfield meeting, Route 66 would have never existed and I doubt if Bobby Troupe would have ever written a song about Route 60.

The phrase "The Mother Road" came from Chapter 12 of John Steinbeck's book "The Grapes of Rath."

Edited December 9, 2011 by Jim_Edwards (see edit history)

[PONTIAC1953]

hi, one interesting thing i learned about route 66, was in oklahoma, each state had to match the federal funds with state funds to build the highway. i have traveled route 66 from springfield, mo. to tulsa, ok. near grove,ok is a section of the original highway. here is what oklahoma did to get the most mileage out of the combined funds. oklahoma spent the federal money on concrete, used to make the 3" edge on both sides of the road, oklahoma spent the state funds on buying asphalt, which was cheaper to buy. the road is narrow, only about eight feet wide covering both lanes, no center line painted, each section of the road is about fifteen feet long, so you feel a steady beat of thumping as the tires roll over each joint. i drove this section in a 1986 pontiac fiero gt, which has a pretty firm suspension, boy was i glad when i got to tulsa,ok. needless to say, i took the turnpike back to joplin,mo, going home. it is my plan, that when my 1953 pontiac chieftain custom catalina is roadworthy again, i'm going to travel all of route 66 that i can from chicago to santa monica, ca. santa monica is where i attended all but the first three months of high school, and also where i bought my custom catalina in 1973, when i was 17 years old. charles coker, 1953 pontiac tech advisor.

[Guest Jim_Edwards]

Charles it wasn't just Route 66 that got a dose of narrow pavement in the late 1920s. Of course we have to keep in mind that all vehicles of those times were no where nearly as wide as our land yachts of the late 1950s up.

Where I live we have a section of the original concrete of U.S. 90 poured circa 1926 before its official designation as U.S. 90. For years it carried dual designation of U.S. 90 and its first designation as a Texas Highway. That pavement is quite narrow and though having a center stripe it is impossible for two of today's full size SUVs or pickups to pass one another unless one or both drop off onto the shoulder. Thankfully U.S. 90 was realigned in 1936 with the new pavement being wide enough to accommodate 18 wheelers passing one another. That 1936 alignment not engulfed by I-10 carries massive amounts of more or less local rural traffic yet today though paralleling I-10 in for much of the distance between Houston and San Antonio. In the days before the passage of the Federal Highway Act of 1926, U.S. 90 was promoted by the organizers as being the Old Spanish Trail and stretched from St. Augustine, Fl. to San Diego, Ca. (actually no one has ever confirmed any portion of it had ever been followed by the early Spanish colonizers)

Getting back to Route 66, though neat to attempt to follow it from Chicago to Santa Monica the amount of drivable road is lessening with each passing year in spite of association efforts in each of the states it passed through. Remembering what it was like before the Interstate Highways makes return trips somewhat depressing to me personally, particularly when driving the sections possible between Amarillo, Tx. and Santa Monica. Anyone who has recollections of all the motels, restaurants, and gas stations along the way that are now totally gone or sitting as a shell of an abandoned building has to be saddened even knowing I-40 made it impossible for most of them to survive as viable businesses. I find between Albuquerque and Barstow particularly depressing, with exception of the stretch between Seligman and Kingman, having vivid memories of Route 66's prime times. We can keep our vehicles of that era up and running to retrace that which they might have traveled, but we can't expect the culture along the road to be the same as they were. Driving Route 66 into the early 1960s and before was both a challenge for man and machines and a cultural experience likely never to be repeated again.