Why The Craze?

  Why is Route 66 such a craze these days? Alot of it has to do with the fact that people have a yearning, a longing, for the way things used to be. The days before interstate highways and the proliferation of fast food places and strip malls. U.S. Highway 66 is sort of a microcosm of America itself. It is where the motel was first developed, it is  where the first McDonald's opened in Arcadia, California. It is where the fast food business really began its stranglehold on America (not a good thing), and it also represents the days when highways went through the heart of towns instead of along the edge and, as a result, downtown business districts were the heart and soul of every community in America. It also represents a time when highways conformed to the landscape instead of  blasting through it like today's highways blast through hills instead of over or around them.
  In the nebulous beginnings of cross country highway travel, hotels, usually in he heart of cities and towns everywhere, were the norm. These developed into tourist cabins along the highways and then tourist cabins developed into motels.
  The early days of highway travel were not for the faint-hearted. Most of the roads were dirt, which turned into quagmires after rains and the pavement usually extended to the edges of towns or a short distance beyond, before ending. That is when the dangers of highway travel began and those experiences are still written about to this day. Dwight Eisenhower had a bad experience with muddy highways in 1917. During World War II, he was impressed with the Autobahn in Germany and, as a  result, in 1956, while president, he signed the Interstate Highway Act.
  While Route 66 receives most of the attention, there are/were other highways that were replaced, in whole or in part, by interstates. To me, the ones with the most fascinating histories are U.S. Highway 80 and U.S. Highway 91. U.S. Highway 80 once ran from Tybee Island, Georgia to San Diego, California. Now it ends in Dallas, Texas. Everything west of Dallas is now either a business loop for an interstate highway, a state highway, a city street, a county road, a private road or completely missing in some places. Some pieces of old highway 80 are still there, reposing under the merciless sun and serving as a reminder of days gone by. U.S. Highway 80 was once called "The Broadway of America ," in deference to highway 66's appellation as "The Main Street of America." Highway 80 was also one of the busiet highways in America during its heyday and also represented a microcosm of American life, but it never received as much attention as its northern cousin. Highway 80 was actually longer than highway 66. It ran from coast to coast while highway 66 ran from Chicago to Los Angeles.
  The other one that has the most fascinating history, is my opinion, is U.S. Highway 91, which once ran from
Long Beach, California to the Canadian border at Sweetgrass, Montana. Now, U.S. Highway 91 is only 145 miles long, running from Idaho Falls, Idaho to Brigham City, Utah in two different segments separated by a 20 mile "co-alignment" with Interstate 15 south of Pocatello, Idaho. The northern segment, 43 miles long, between Idaho Falls and Pocatello, mostly runs in the shadow of Interstate 15, basically serving as a frontage road for the interstate. The southern segment strikes out on its own and receives quite a bit of traffic.
I have read recently that AASHTO, the organization which oversees federal highways, is seriously considering de-commissioning the remaining segment of U.S. Highway 91, relegating it to the history books, the same fate which has befallen U.S. Highway 66.