Miami Nine-Foot Section, Oklahoma. National Park Service Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program.

Washington, DC – Winding from Chicago to LA, more than two thou­sand miles all the way, Route 66 is still the place to get your kicks. If you’d like a break from cookie-cutter restau­rants and lodg­ing options, this fabled road remains lined with home­spun busi­nesses and attrac­tions that can only be missed if your eyes are closed. The National Park Service just launched an online Discover Our Shared Heritage travel itin­er­ary, avail­able at www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/route66/, that makes it easy to trek back in time on the “Mother Road.”

“Route 66 crosses two-thirds of the coun­try, con­nect­ing not just east and west but the past to the present,” said act­ing National Park Service Director Dan Wenk. “This new travel itin­er­ary is designed to help peo­ple expe­ri­ence the spirit of Route 66 and dis­cover the dozens of unique places, now listed in the National Register of Historic Places, that are iconic reminders of the early days of auto­mo­bile travel.”

Route 66 harkens back to a time when 98 per­cent of lodg­ing was pri­vately owned and small busi­nesses used slo­gans, signs, folk art, neon lights, and gim­micks to stand out. Sections of the road appear to be frozen in time; trav­el­ers can still sleep in a wig­wam, eat under a super­sized milk bot­tle, swim in a spring-fed lake, catch a movie at a drive-in the­atre, shop in a gen­eral store, pump gas at an old-fashioned fill­ing sta­tion, and take in many other sights that have been enjoyed by gen­er­a­tions. Etched in the American con­scious­ness and immor­tal­ized in Bobby Troup’s famous song, Route 66 is a reminder that “you may have trav­eled near or far, but you haven’t seen the coun­try, ‘till you’ve seen the coun­try by car.”

The National Park Service’s Heritage Education Services and the National Park Service Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program pro­duced the itin­er­ary in part­ner­ship with the American Express and World Monuments Fund Sustainable Tourism Initiative and the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers. The itin­er­ary was funded in part through a gen­er­ous con­tri­bu­tion from the American Express and World Monuments Fund Sustainable Tourism Initiative, which rewards and encour­ages respon­si­ble stew­ard­ship of his­toric sites.

The Route 66 itin­er­ary is the 49th in the National Park Service’s ongo­ing Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary Series. The series pro­motes pub­lic aware­ness of his­tory and encour­ages vis­its to his­toric places through­out the coun­try. All of the itin­er­aries in the series can be found at www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel.

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