USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -It’s possible to drive from Oklahoma City to California’s Central Valley in two days. But that wasn’t our plan. In his classic novel The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck called Route 66 the “Mother Road” because it beckoned to desperate migrants fleeing the Dust Bowl as they moved west in search of jobs in the 1930s.

Detailed explanation-2: -The Will Rogers Highway-“officially” named this by the US Highway 66 Association in 1952. A plaque dedicating the highway to the humorist is still located opposite the western terminus of Route 66 in Santa Monica, California.

Detailed explanation-3: -U.S. Highway 66-popularly known as Route 66-embodies a complex, rich history that goes well beyond any chronicle of the road itself. An artery of transportation, an agent of social transformation, and a remnant of America’s past, it stretches 2, 400 miles across two-thirds of the continent.

Detailed explanation-4: -Dust Bowl migrants squeezed into trucks and jalopies-beat-up old cars-laden with their meager possessions and headed west, many taking the old U.S. Highway 66.

Detailed explanation-5: -Route 66 became one of the most famous roads in America, having been popularized in American culture through books, songs, music, magazines, movies, and television shows. During the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, it was the primary route for the migration of farm workers from the Midwest to California.