![]() Route 66 wound through small towns, lined by cafes, tourist courts, service stations and points of interest. It also tied together America's rural communities, helping create a national identity. For hundreds of thousands of people, the road's role as a means of escape from the Dust Bowl of the 1930s can't be forgotten. It's nearly impossible to write a story about Route 66, especially for an Oklahoma newspaper, without mentioning John Steinbeck's 1939 novel, "The Grapes of Wrath." Steinbeck called the highway "The Mother Road," a name deeply ingrained in the country's collective memory. In many ways, building the road helped build the modern American economy. Paving the road and maintaining it during the Great Depression provided thousands of jobs. With its opening, Americans finally had a cross-country road that helped farmers move their grain to markets and the trucking industry move goods to cities without railroad service. ![]() The honoree is historic Route 66, which opened in 1926 as one of the country's first transcontinental roads. There's only one that rates a party that stretches 2,448 miles, only one that has seen the country through bad times and carried us forward to prosperity. ![]() We're not talking about any old road, of course. ![]() What's the occasion? America is celebrating a road, a ribbon of concrete that slashed across the country from Chicago to Santa Monica, Calif. IT doesn't happen often, maybe only every 75 years or so. ![]()
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