Except for time away at college, I’ve lived my entire life within two or three miles of the path that was Route 66. I was a young kid when the last pieces of the interstate highway system were installed and never experienced the feeling of touring the Mother Road. When I was seven and my father hopped on the newly opened I-70 near our house, reaching 70 mph (the speed limit at the time), I knew the old days of automobile travel were over. From that moment, whether traveling cross-country or even across a state, two-lane roads were discarded by most except locals driving between smaller cities and towns.
The 2,448-mile stretch of Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles passed through beautiful raw American landscapes, something most of us experience today in flyover views to the West Coast. The largest city between its start and terminus was St. Louis, and when coming from Illinois, the old road split off in a few directions through town, usually beginning north at the Chain of Rocks Bridge downward toward Manchester, Chippewa and Watson. The final jump-off point before hitting small-town and rural areas was the St. Louis suburbs of Crestwood, Sunset Hills, Fenton and Eureka.
The experience of traveling the Road was mythologized by a 1946 song, “Get Your Kicks on Route 66,” further popularized a decade later by Nat King Cole. Although having little to do with its title, a TV adventure show called “Route 66” aired from 1960-64, even as the old road was being readied to be replaced or bypassed by interstates like I-44. With heaping sentimental nostalgia, Pixar’s 2006 animated “Cars” movie exposed millions in later generations to the lore of the Mother Road and the romance of cross-country road touring.
I lived a mile south of the old road in Crestwood for 20 years. While serving on the board of aldermen and board president twelve years ago, I pulled into a gas station at the west end of the city, one of the last before Watson/old Route 66 merges into I-44. Four men sporting leather jackets and shades in their 50s rolled up on three-wheeled motorized “trikes” and stepped off to gas up. I asked where they were from, and in heavy accents they responded Germany. They came to America expressly to drive the path of the Road. When I went inside and mentioned the encounter to the store manager, he smiled, saying he had seen so many travelers on the same trek he lost count. “Probably hundreds,” he said. A man from England even shipped his classic Cadillac across the ocean so he and his wife could use it to cruise the remnants of 66.
Crestwood had numerous memorable Route 66 sites, classic service stations like Site Oil, the first McDonald’s in the region — now in its third remodel, Il Vesuvio Restaurant with its volcano sign and, most notably, the long-gone 66 Drive-In. Only a few remain, like Crestwood Bowl and its restored iconic sign. With Crestwood Plaza, an abandoned hulk awaiting a viable redevelopment plan, I recalled what I saw at the gas station, and wondered what a stopover like a “Route 66 Visitor’s Center” might mean for foreign tourists or anyone seeking to experience a bygone era of travel. I suggested to the city manager that perhaps the new mall owners would consider setting aside a small storefront for it, with memorabilia on display and collectibles for sale. It might also encourage travelers to stay a few hours to shop at local Crestwood businesses. I never heard back.
On a visit to a well-known local brewery and restaurant looking to expand its operations to a 45-acre site, the 47-acre mall footprint seemed a logical fit. Who wouldn’t want to brew beer shipped nationally with a label stamped “Brewed on Historic U.S. Route 66”? I mentioned the idea to the company’s VP of marketing. Nothing again. It was probably a bad omen that a microbrewery and restaurant business named for Route 66 had opened on Watson but soon closed several years earlier.
When I led a town hall meeting in 2014 attended by 100 mostly older residents about economic development along Watson Road, the idea of potentially tying the corridor to Route 66 won wide audience interest. Since then, Crestwood has undergone significant generational turnover, and newer, younger residents have little awareness of Route 66 and can’t tap into that nostalgia and cultural mystique. Today, banners and 66 road markers are reminders of that legacy, but you must be over 70 to possess any meaningful memories of travelling the Mother Road.
For most, driving is a largely utilitarian exercise, taking us from here to there in typically under 50 miles a day. We pass familiar sites so often they become an unnoticeable blur. The mystique of road touring still exists, and Route 66 is an undeniable piece of true Americana, but will it survive another century, or even another generation?
