Billy Connolly’s Route 66 by Billy Connolly

Author:Billy Connolly [Connolly, Billy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780748129959
Publisher: Hachette Digital
Published: 2011-09-14T12:00:00+00:00

Springfield, Illinois … Springfield, Missouri too

Rolling on, I passed Rolla – which modestly calls itself ‘The Middle of Everywhere’ – and a string of places with evocative names – Doolittle, Hooker Cut, Devils Elbow, Buckhorn and Laquey – until I arrived in Springfield, Missouri, widely regarded in the folklore of Route 66 as the road’s birthplace.

The Mother Road didn’t get its snappy name by accident. In 1925 highway officials in Washington came up with a plan for assigning names to the 96,000-mile network of interstate highways that was being constructed and linked across America. Those running east to west would be given even numbers, while odd numbers would be assigned to the north–south routes. The longest east–west routes, stretching from coast to coast, would all end in a zero. But they decided to make one exception – Route 60 – which would head diagonally from Chicago to Los Angeles, crossing Routes 20, 30, 40 and 50.

Maps were printed and signs painted for the proposed Route 60, running from Illinois to Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. But then the influential William J. Fields, Governor of Kentucky, kicked up a fuss. Upset that none of the prestigious routes ending in a zero would run through his state, he persuaded the authorities in Washington to assign Route 60 to a road from the Atlantic coast in Virginia, through various states – including Kentucky – to Springfield, Missouri. As a result, the road from Chicago to Los Angeles would now have to be relabelled Route 62.

Meanwhile, the owner of a restaurant and service station outside Tulsa, Oklahoma, was following all of this with a great deal of interest. Cyrus Avery was acutely aware of the impact of a busy road on business. As chairman of the Oklahoma Department of Highways, he had already successfully lobbied to ensure that the Chicago to Los Angeles road would not follow the old Santa Fe Trail, which bypassed Oklahoma. Instead, thanks to Avery, it would follow a lesser-known trail from the California Gold Rush era that ran straight through his hometown of Tulsa. Now, faced with the humiliation of losing the prestigious Route 60 designation, Avery joined forces with a counterpart in Missouri – A.H. Piepmeier. Telegrams flew between Springfield, Tulsa and Washington, but Avery and Piepmeier couldn’t manage to convince the federal bureaucrats to reverse their decision to award Route 60 to the road running through Kentucky.

Then, during a meeting with Piepmeier in Springfield, Avery noticed that the catchy number 66 had not yet been assigned to any road. He swiftly fired off another telegram to Washington and this time the bureaucrats were happy to comply with his suggestion. As the first reference to Route 66 was made in that meeting in Springfield, the town has since claimed to be the road’s birthplace. A few months later, the US Highway 66 Association was founded. At its inaugural meeting, Avery coined the name ‘The Main Street of America’ for the route, and the mythologising began.

Springfield

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