Route 66. The National Road. The Lincoln Highway. What do all of these have in common? They are all part of the U.S. Highway system, the world’s first nationwide network of numbered highways.

It is an integral part of 20th Century American history and culture and has been the catalyst for much of it. Since its inception, this system has found its way into the American psyche and has been the subject of everything from songs and TV shows to being the stage for American innovations such as the motel and fast food restaurant. It has also been viewed as a continuation of America’s frontier spirit as it enabled people to move easily from one part of the country to another. Enjoy this trip down the classic highways of history.

Route 66 (from Chicago to Santa Monica)
Route 66 was a highway spawned by the demands of a rapidly changing America. Beginning in 1933, thousands of unemployed male youths from virtually every state were put to work as laborers on road gangs to create the Chicago-to-Los Angeles highway that was reported as "continuously paved" in 1938.

In his famous social commentary, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck proclaimed U. S. Highway 66 the "Mother Road." Steinbeck’s classic 1939 novel served to immortalize Route 66 in the American consciousness. An estimated 210,000 people migrated to California to escape the despair of the Dust Bowl and for them, Route 66 symbolized the "road to opportunity."

After the second world war, Americans were more mobile than ever before. Thousands of soldiers, sailors, and airmen abandoned the harsh winters of the northeast for the "barbecue culture" of the Southwest and the West, and followed Route 66 to greater freedom.

One such emigrant, Robert William Troup, Jr., penned a lyrical road map of the now famous cross-country road in which the words, "get your kicks on Route 66" became a catch phrase for countless motorists who moved back and forth between Chicago and the Pacific Coast.

The evolution of tourist-targeted facilities is well represented in the roadside architecture along Route 66. Motels evolved from earlier features of the American roadside such as the auto camp and the tourist home. Motor courts offered additional amenities, such as adjoining restaurants, souvenir shops, and swimming pools.

In the early years, service station prototypes were developed regionally through experimentation, and then were adopted universally across the country.

Ironically, the public lobby for rapid mobility and improved highways that gained Route 66 its enormous popularity in earlier decades also signaled its demise beginning in the mid-1950’s. Mass federal sponsorship for an interstate system of divided highways markedly increased when Eisenhower remembered the impressive German Autobahn system. By 1970, nearly all segments of original Route 66 were bypassed by a modern four-lane highway.

Route 66 symbolized the renewed spirit of optimism that pervaded the country after economic catastrophe and global war. Often called, "The Main Street of America", it linked a remote and under-populated region with two vital 20th century cities-Chicago and Los Angeles. Like the early, long-gone trails of the nineteenth century, Route 66 helped to spirit a second and perhaps more permanent mass relocation of Americans.

The National Road (from Maryland to Illinois)
U.S. Route 40, known as the National Road, was the first highway built entirely with federal funds. The road was authorized by Congress in 1806 during the Jefferson Administration. Construction began in Cumberland, Maryland in 1811. The route closely paralleled the military road opened by George Washington in 1754. Eventually the road was pushed through central Ohio and Indiana reaching Vandalia, Illinois in the 1830’s where construction ceased due to a lack of funds.

The opening of the road saw thousands of travelers heading west over the Allegheny Mountains to settle the rich land of the Ohio River Valley. Small towns along the National Road’s path began to grow and prosper with the increase in population. It is also estimated there was about one tavern every mile on the National Road.

By the early 1850’s technology was changing the way people traveled. The steam locomotive was being perfected and soon railroads would cross the Allegheny Mountains. An article in Harper’s Magazine in November 1879 declared, "The national turnpike that led over the Alleghenies from the East to the West is a glory departed...the Old Pike is left to die."

Just as technology caused the National Road to decline, it also led to its revival with the invention of the automobile in the early 20th century. As "motor touring" became a popular pastime the need for improved roads began to grow. By the mid 1920’s the grid system of numbering highways was in place, thus creating U.S. Route 40 out of the ashes of the National Road. Due to the increased automobile traffic on U.S. Route 40, a whole new network of businesses grew to aid the 21st century traveler and today the highway welcomes a new generation of road warriors.

The Lincoln Highway (from New York to San Francisco)

In 1912, Carl Fisher recognized there were virtually no good roads in the United States. Although his Indianapolis Motor Speedway was already a success and he was working on turning a swamp into the resort community we now know as Miami Beach, he dreamed of another grand idea: a highway spanning the continent.

He called his idea the Coast-to-Coast Rock Highway. The gravel road would cost about ten million dollars. Communities along the route would provide the equipment and in return would receive free materials and a place along America’s first transcontinental highway.

To fund this concept he asked for cash donations from auto manufacturers and accessory companies of 1 percent of their revenues. The public could become members of the highway organization for five dollars. In addition to this fundraising venture, he came up with the idea of naming the highway after Abraham Lincoln to get the attention of Congress (which was then considering spending $1.7 million on a marble memorial to the president).

Over nearly two decades The Lincoln Highway was built, then broken up into a series of U.S. routes. Eventually the highway was designated not as a single road from one destination to another, but as a memorial to Abraham Lincoln. On September 1, 1928, thousands of Boy Scouts fanned out along the highway to mark its position in American lore.

By the late 1940s, the Lincoln Highway started to fade away. However, a new generation of Americans, exposed to its significance, has kept the Highway alive long after its official significance was gone.

The U.S. Highway System is Born
The U.S. Highway System was created by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1925 as a response to the confusion created by the more than 250 routes that wound in and around our nation.

The first was the Lincoln Highway and it revolutionized auto travel by taking previously disjointed roads and combining them into a more significant whole. It also introduced other innovations that formed the basis of the U.S. highway system including year-round paved stretches.

Where named highways relied on their names and colored bands on telephone poles to be recognized, this new system would use uniform numbers for interstate highways and a standardized shield that would be universally recognizable.

The most important change was that this new system would be administered by the state governments, not by for-profit private road clubs. Many organizations previously routed their named highways through cities that would pay them the most or which had the most active civic boosters. Often these highways did not follow the most direct route and sometimes followed two or three.

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