Overview
- Route 66 marks its 100th year in 2026, pulling visitors back to neon-lit motels, diners and roadside attractions along the famed cross-country drive.
- The highway runs about 2,400 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica through eight states, a route first designated as a numbered U.S. highway in November 1926.
- It carried Dust Bowl migrants and World War II traffic in the 1930s and 1940s before the interstate system displaced it, leading to federal decommissioning in 1985.
- Local advocates kept the road’s culture alive, with Arizona barber Angel Delgadillo pushing historic status and more than 250 buildings, districts and road segments now on the National Register of Historic Places.
- Preservation and tourism today sit alongside a fuller reckoning with harms, including eminent domain on tribal lands and risks to Black travelers who relied on guides like the Green Book, with places such as the Threatt Filling Station remembered as rare safe havens.