“66 is the mother road, the road of flight,” said John Steinbeck of the highway that featured very prominently in his book The Grapes of Wrath. Nat King Cole paid a moving homage to it in a song written by Bobby Troupe: (Get Your Kicks) on Route 66. CBS-TV made a weekly series about two friends travelling the highway in a Corvette, and the show spawned a second hit song devoted to the road. What these and other references to Route 66 show is just how much the interstate highway, stretching from Illinois to Southern California, shaped popular culture.

On this day, November 11, in 1926, Route 66 came into official existence as a highway with the signage of a bill creating the National Highway System.

Cyrus Avery, a successful businessman from Oklahoma, became known as the Father of Route 66 for his relentless pursuit of building a Chicago-to-Los Angeles route (which of course would pass through his home state.) As Avery was charged by the highway committee to plot the highway so that it would incorporate major roadways already in use, he was best positioned to create the new road. Avery was even the one to assign it the number 66, for its pleasant sound and ease of remembrance.