Verified reporting
Reporting: a highway born on November 11, 1926
Route 66 is 100 years old today. According to a history published by the Federal Highway Administration, the American Association of State Highway Officials adopted the U.S. numbered highway system on November 11, 1926. That system included U.S. 66, running from Chicago to Los Angeles through Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
Communities along the old road are celebrating. The Route 66 Road Ahead Partnership's centennial calendar lists a noon ceremony today at Mother Road Plaza in El Reno, Oklahoma, featuring the inaugural raising of nine flags honoring America and the eight Route 66 states. KOB-TV in Albuquerque reported that the New Mexico Route 66 Alliance planned to bury a time capsule around 1 p.m. local time at Enchanted Trails Trading Post, to be opened at the road's bicentennial. The Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway scheduled a statewide conference and centennial celebration in Springfield, Illinois.
The anniversary falls on Veterans Day, a fitting coincidence. The Saturday Evening Post notes that servicemen used the highway as a military transport corridor during World War II, while other Americans followed it west to work in defense plants.
Legal / factual context
Context: the number almost was 60
The road's famous number came out of a hard-fought argument among the states, not a decree from Washington. The FHWA history by Richard F. Weingroff explains that the Secretary of Agriculture appointed a Joint Board on Interstate Highways in 1925 at the unanimous request of state highway agencies. Its members were mostly state highway officials, including Oklahoma's Cyrus Avery and Missouri's B. H. Piepmeier.
The board first assigned the Chicago to Los Angeles route the number 60. Kentucky Gov. William J. Fields protested that his state had been left without a major route ending in zero. Missouri and Oklahoma objected just as strongly to giving up 60; Piepmeier said Missouri had already printed 600,000 maps. According to the FHWA account, the deadlock broke on April 30, 1926, when Oklahoma Chief Highway Engineer John M. Page noticed that 66 had not been assigned. Avery and Piepmeier wired Washington: “We prefer sixty six to sixty two.”
The road then took on a life of its own. John Steinbeck called it “the Mother Road” in The Grapes of Wrath as Dust Bowl families traveled west. After World War II it became the classic family road trip, lined with independent motels, diners and filling stations. Interstates built after 1956 gradually replaced it, and the Saturday Evening Post reports that I-40 bypassed the last stretch in Arizona in 1984 before the route was decommissioned in 1985. Today the National Park Service says more than 250 buildings, bridges, road alignments and other Route 66 sites are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Sources and reading
- From Names to Numbers: The Origins of the U.S. Numbered Highway System (Federal Highway Administration, Richard F. Weingroff)
Nov. 11, 1926 AASHO adoption; 1925 Joint Board; Route 60 dispute; April 30, 1926 telegram; Jardine quotations. - Route 66: 100 Years of the Mother Road (The Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 11, 2026)
Steinbeck quotation; World War II transport corridor; 1984 I-40 bypass; 1985 decommissioning. - Albuquerque celebrates Route 66's official 100th anniversary (KOB 4)
Time capsule burial plans; 2,448 total miles. - Route 66 Centennial upcoming events (Route 66 Road Ahead Partnership)
El Reno nine-flag raising; Springfield, Illinois conference. - Travel Route 66 (National Park Service)
More than 250 National Register listings along the route.
Reporting above is based on the cited records. The section labeled “Our view” is editorial opinion. This article is not legal advice. Our Gadsden Flag is an independent brand, not a government or military organization.
Conservative commentary · Our view
Our View: a monument to federalism and free people on the move
Route 66 is remembered for neon and nostalgia, but its origin story carries a lesson Washington should relearn. The states asked for a national plan, the states drew the lines, and the states fought over the numbers. When Agriculture Secretary William M. Jardine accepted the plan, he wrote, as quoted by the FHWA, that “It is gratifying to have the States on their own initiative originate a plan of such broad national aspect and value.” That is federalism working as designed: cooperation among sovereign states rather than mandates from above.
Jardine also said the new routes would serve “that freedom of communication which more than anything else binds our States and our country in one united nation.” He was right. The open road is one of the great expressions of American liberty. No permission slip was required to load up the car and head west for a new job, a new farm or a new start.
What made the Mother Road legendary was not government. It was private enterprise: the family that opened a motel in the desert, the mechanic who fixed the overheated radiator, the diner owner who stayed open late. Today that same spirit is keeping the road alive through local associations, small museums and town volunteers raising flags in El Reno.
On a day when America honors the veterans who kept this country free, it is worth remembering what they defended: a nation where an ordinary citizen can still pick a direction and drive. Happy 100th birthday, Route 66. Here is to the next hundred years of free people on the open road.