Route 66: A History
Road in Decline
Even as Route 66's cultural and symbolic significance grew in the 1950s and 1960s, its physical presence began to fade. The Interstate Highway Act of 1956 allotted funds for 41,000 miles of freeway to accommodate the exponential increase in automobile traffic. Since Route 66 forged an efficient, direct path from the Midwest to the west coast, Interstate 40 directly paralleled it through most of the Southwest, rendering most stretches of the older highway obsolete.
The residents and businesses along Route 66 felt the effects of I-40 immediately. Mirna Delgadillo, daughter of Route 66 barber Angel Delgadillo, said of Seligman, Arizona: "Before the bypass, crossing the street was like taking your life into your hands, because there was so much traffic. And then after the bypass happened, we could lay in the street for hours and not worry about getting run over. Literally from one day to the next it went from being alive to being dead" (Perez).
Small towns whose economies had flourished on Route 66 tourism lost the majority of their customers overnight; many businesses were forced to close or relocate nearer to an I-40 interchange.
Cafe Twin Arrows, Route 66. The cafe is an example of a "Valentine" pre-fabricated cafe.
Rise of Tourism