Route 66: America's First Main Street
by Spencer Crump

This account recalls the days (1926-1984) of the highway that linked southern California to Chicago. With prose supplementing modern and vintage photographs, the author tells how motorists can still travel over the remnants of Route 66, enjoying beautiful scenery and interesting people.

This book was originally purchased by my brother-in-law at a truck stop somewhere close to the original Route 66. He was a trucker and often made runs along I-40 in Texas and New Mexico which travels along some of where 66 used to be. I have always thought of Route 66 as somewhat mythical in Americana and thought that this would be an interesting history of the storied route. However, the book was not really what I was expecting. I thought it would provide a state by state view of the route describing the cities and attractions along the way. It somewhat tries to do this but the way the book is laid out leaves a lot to be desired. Instead of sticking to descriptions of the road, cities, and landscapes, the book goes into a lot of history of the times when the road was in service, from 1926 to 1984. The narrative of the book is not divided into chapters which results in a lot of repetition. It does have breaks where there are three or four pages which discuss events of the times such as sections on the automobiles manufactured, movies, radio, and television programs, and then the narrative is continued after these breaks which makes it somewhat confusing. There are also discussions on politics, the Depression, gangsters of the 30s, telephone services, etc. The book is filled with photos and maps of the route which do make it interesting. However, the photos and maps are not laid out with the main text of the book so you see photos with descriptions many pages before they are talked about in the narrative. The book is also somewhat dated being originally published in 1994 so some of the author's comments about things along the route that still exist may not be true today.

Overall, I felt this did provide a lot of information but some of it was very tangential to the overall premise of the book which was Route 66. I thought the book could have been laid out better with chapters and without the interruptions where things such as automobiles or telephones are discussed. Mild recommendation.

Sending to labmomnm in Albuquerque, NM who selected it from the NF VBB. Hope you enjoy this and that it provides some good info to you about Route 66!

I picked this up at the post office on Saturday - my apologies for the delay in journaling. I have driven along parts of Route 66 - the actual path moved around over the years, but there are stretches of I-40 in TX & NM that follow along the old route, & some places where the old road is still in use as a local access road. One of the motels in Albuquerque sat vacant for years, but re-opened a few years ago as a cluster of shops & restaurants in the renovated space. Pretty cool!