national park service

U.S. Highway 66 -- popularly known as Route 66 or the Mother Road -- holds an elevated place in American consciousness and tells diverse stories of a mobile nation on the road. Discover this shared heritage through historic places you can still experience today, which are reminders of our past and the influence the automobile has had on our lives and nation today. There are more than 250 buildings, bridges, road alignments and other sites along Route 66 that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This travel itinerary highlights over 100 of those sites, and is part of the National Park Service's Share Our Heritage Travel Itineray series. Enjoy your trip and visiting these special places along historic Route 66!

The history of this country has included a number of periods of human migration. Shortly after its emergence from the War of Independence, the new nation saw the steady outward drift of its people across the Appalachians into the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys. Navigable rivers and foot trails and military roads were the earliest transportation network. While some turnpikes leading to and from burgeoning centers of trade were surfaced with gravel or "pounded stone," most roads were improved only to the extent of removing stumps, boulders, and other major irregularities. Most backwoods trails remained impassable to wheeled vehicles, especially during the winter or subsequent spring thaws. For the most part, bridges were nonexistent; early travelers forded smaller streams and crossed larger ones by ferry.