THE BLOG © www.rt66pix.com
Above: Photographer Frank Gifford with AMERICA (SOLARIZED)
All images below appear full-size in one or more galleries. Permission is granted to link. Written material may be quoted or reprinted for non-commercial use only with appropriate credit.
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HERE'S THE ON-RAMP
If you're just surfing--WELCOME! You're about to explore and celebrate the American experience in images from Route 66 and many other places.
The overarching theme is America--past and present--along historic transportation arteries including Rt 66, the National (Cumberland) Road, Lincoln Highway, Erie Canal, Natchez Trace, Pony Express route, frontier trails and historic railroads. Capsule histories are on the ROADS page.
There are also photo galleries for 20+ cities including Denver, Memphis, Natchez, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco and Santa Fe. Other images capture American life in out-of-the-way places.
This is the largest site of its kind, offering unique fine art photographs and photo-based artwork enjoyed in 175+ countries (in blue) according to Google. The big omission is Greenland, population 57,000. Hey, let's buy it...OR INVADE IT!
Looking is free at full-screen size and there's even a slideshow mode. We don't require registration or subscriptions, use pop-ups, send spam, or make you squint at a stamp-sized image. The site is best viewed under controlled lighting on a laptop or desktop--not on a cellphone. If the horse and rider image appears lit by fluorescent bulbs instead of golden sunshine, your device has an improper White Balance. Some can be adjusted.
Most photographs are available for sale or licensing--ordering is encrypted and secure. Images appearing automatically on the Home Page are in the first gallery "Home Page Slideshow."
I don't sugar-frost this stuff. While 99.99% of the site is suitable for children and the workplace, a few images feature alternate lifestyles, obscene signs or gestures, partial nudity, beggars, public drunkenness etc. Most appear in the city galleries...as they do in real life. I believe these photographs are compelling and may offer teachable moments.
The TECH section discusses photographic technique and technology. ROADS summarizes American transportation corridors and movements. RIDES tells Detroit where to go, HISTORY dusts off the past, PRESERVATION offers successes and failures. And for a refreshing break the FUN!© section offers a chance to test your new-found knowledge.
Everything is on this site, there is no social media component. There's lots to see and enjoy, and you can take your time.
So...Happy Trails and Happy Motoring!
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THIS ART COMES FROM LIFE
Everything on rt66pix.com is first captured on a camera, as this man in a moving Tucker demonstrates. (Although I much prefer my vantage point!)
Images are offered exclusively here as fine art photographs, or given an artistic treatment such as oil painting, watercolor...or even fresco.
Archival-quality prints are offered on your choice of high-quality stock, up to 24 x 36-inches (61 x 91 cm), from America's largest professional photography lab. There are also canvas wraps, metal prints, glass prints, standouts, wall clings and personal merchandise. Non-US orders are welcomed and may be handled by pro-lab partners in Canada, Europe or Australia.
The "Shopping Cart" is encrypted and secure. We never run sales or offer coupons etc. The intrusive copyright symbol and website logo watermarks do not appear on prints or merchandise.
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NEWS & NOTES
Route 66 items:
. The VW Bug Ranch has been relocated to Amarillo's east side, exactly one mile (1.6 km) west of the Big Texan Steakhouse. It is along the I-40 north service road at Sunrise St. The "VW Bug Ranch" photo gallery includes both locations.
Oddly, most vehicles at the new location are hulking Lincoln Town Cars, installed nose-up. Farm silos and bins are in second place, nose-down VWs are third. (Safety standards and competition doomed the original VW design. The last US new-car sale was in 1979, so many younger people never saw them on roads.)
. It's 1959 again at a desert oasis! After years of just standing there, the huge Roy's sign on Rt 66 at Amboy CA is again glowing in neon splendor after a restoration. Roy's also has its own photo gallery on the site.
Current Route 66 advisories:
. Bridge replacement near Wellston OK means a three-mile (5 km) detour, probably through mid-2025.
. The Pony Bridge near Bridgeport OK is open after rebuilding created a wider deck.
. A lengthy desert stretch of Rt 66 from Needles to nearly Amboy CA remains closed because of damaged 1930-50s wooden and concrete bridges. (Details are HERE and select "National Trails Hwy".) The detour via I-40 began in 2017 and repairs may not be completed in time for the road's centennial in 2026! The Roy's complex at Amboy is open and accessible from the Kelbaker Road and Ludlow exits. Roy's has A/C, canopy shade, seating, porta-potty restrooms, cold drinks, gasoline and diesel, but no meals or lodging.
. A short stretch of Rt 66 or "Ludlow Road" just west of Ludlow CA has been closed since 2012 (!) according to the website above. Ancient bridges over dry washes have deteriorated. I-40 is the detour.
More about this website:
. Automotive-related articles have been moved to the new RIDES page and new material has been added.
. 300+ Mardi Gras images have been added to the New Orleans city gallery. This is an unauthorized scene from one of the floats:
. Miami Beach has a new gallery of 800+ images showing art deco and streamline moderne architecture plus street life. Here's a slice of that life, 1/200th of a second--too fast for some of her tassels:
The image also breaks new ground photographically by using an armpit for a framing device.
. Key West FL and Mobile AL-MS also have new galleries devoted primarily to architecture, foliage and street scenes.
. A gallery is devoted to people taking Selfies. This perfectly (and beautifully) composed image is from Times Square.
. The Oregon and California Trails appear in the "Frontier Trails" gallery, mixing historic and contemporary scenes. The gallery also explores the "shortcut" that doomed the Donner Party. Some emigrants had time for sightseeing, and Ayers Natural Bridge in WY just one mile (1.6 km) from the joint trail became a popular attraction. It is now a county park, a great place to throw pebbles into the stream that created all this.
. Another new gallery "Happy Happy Happy Happy" shows two-fisted outbreaks of Joy. Too much of a good thing can be WONDERFUL, especially when it's strawberry. Enjoy! He did...I did...and you can did too!
. And a gallery has been added for Blur...showcasing still photographs that move. This is from a series about motorcyclists on Route 66:
His unusual blond hair seems to be glued in place, overcoming wind resistance. Actually, that's a perfectly positioned bale of hay.
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MoME
I agree with this guy. Learn what others have done through the Museum of Modern Art, books etc. Then turn your back on it, go out and make your own art, creating the MoME: Museum of ME.
Scenes like this will appear in front of us today (or any day) and never repeat. Only photographs can capture them.
Good images may acquire even more value as they age. William Eggleston's photographs are perfect examples. Clothing changes. Hair, cars, signs too. The time-shift alone creates interest.
Perhaps even our phones will someday give way, making all of today's street images seem fascinating.
(More on photography is in the TECH section.)
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PROGRESS...AT A PRICE
This National Road scene, photographed for its grace and beauty, also shows what a difference roughly a century can make.
The view is eastward at daybreak from Blaine OH toward Wheeling WV eight miles (13 km) away. The S-bridge in the foreground (restored and open to pedestrians) is from 1828. Reinforced concrete arches in the background carry US 40 up a steep hill (out of view at right) and date from 1933.
In between was a century of tremendous change. We started with hand-made wooden wagons on wood and iron wheels, pulled by oxen, mules or horses over loose stones, dirt and mud. We ended with mass-produced steel cars and trucks on air-filled rubber tires, pulled by gasoline or diesel engines over concrete and asphalt. And what had been a full day's travel was reduced to half-an-hour.
We also got new options. Trains were experimental in 1828, but the dominant travel mode a century later. And flying, a fantasy in 1828, was taking off as a business with scheduled passenger service.
Other examples of progress that are not generally known are below. But first, in keeping with internet tradition here's some spurious advertising: a free limited-time offer! Well before "One Weird Trick" there was "One Weird TRIP (Do This!) (NO, NOT THAT!)" sponsored by the Donner Party:
. After placing this in a Springfield IL newspaper, the Donner Party traveled from IL to CA. They got a late start (April 14th) and bad directions on a shortcut that wasn't. Many members were trapped the winter of 1846-47 below a snow-clogged CA mountain pass. Some died of starvation...or resorted to cannibalism. But just a generation (23 years) later, they could have taken the train to CA and arrived safely in five-days with meals provided! And infant Isabella Breen, who lived until 1935, could have flown to CA on a scheduled airliner late in her life.
. Oregon Trail pioneer Ezra Meeker (1830-1928) walked 2,000 miles (3,200 km) alongside an ox-drawn wagon in 1852. He drove a car along the trail in 1915 and flew over it as an airplane passenger in 1924. His speed went from 2 to 100 MPH (3.2 to 161 km/h).
. In 1861 Pony Express riders could have sent telegrams, spanning the long lonely 2,000 miles (3,200 km) in minutes, even as the service was delivering its final letters, which normally took 10-days. A couple of riders could have sent Air Mail letters in their lifetimes--service began in 1918. Transcontinental phone calls were possible by then too.
. Some Model-T drivers on the primitive Lincoln Highway of @1915 lived to travel the modern Interstates beginning in the mid-1950s. Cars also made a rapid improvement. By the dawn of the Interstate era, many had radios, automatic transmissions, V8 engines, power steering, power brakes and tubeless tires. A few even had seat belts and air conditioning.
But now consider the costs of progress:
. When undocumented aliens in the form of Anglo settlers (including my ancestors) first turned up, what is now the continental US was already populated. One scholar estimates 15 million Natives were living in harmony with the land...and had been for generations. Indians outnumbered Anglos until the 1830s. Indians east of the Mississippi River were mainly communal farmers who hunted and fished. On the plains, Natives had familiar hunting grounds and some farmed and fished. Their lifestyles would end abruptly.
. European newcomers generally regarded Natives as savages, obstacles to Manifest Destiny, the God-given right of Protestant settlers (Catholics and others arrived later) to control, subdivide and populate the continent. Europeans brought deadly smallpox plus superior weaponry, and killed or expelled Indians in the name of "progress." Our government, and many of our ancestors, carried out genocide, ethnic cleansing and forced deportation onto reservations--or concentration camps. To coin a phrase: "We got rid of the Indians and named the land Indiana." Many Native Americans were denied US citizenship until 1924, and even then some, along with Blacks, were not allowed to vote.
. Cities rose and many fell along with their transportation corridors. Buffalo NY, Wheeling WV and Natchez MS (along with many others) peaked in importance during the 1800s then plunged. Some bypassed places, like Depew OK along Route 66, never recovered--although the road did just fine. Others, like Madison IN, languished for a century then came back better than before.
. Automobiles and paved roads made travel easier and faster early in the 20th century. But thousands of mom-and-pop crossroads stores failed because local folks suddenly had other choices. Little rural businesses could not compete on price or selection with big new "chain" stores in newly-accessible cities. Often entire towns suffered from the gravitational pull of a larger place that had everything--including cafes and a movie theater.
. Urban neighborhoods were severed, some were bulldozed, under the promise of slum clearance or "Urban Renewal" often in conjunction with Interstate highway projects. Some recovered, some did not, and some slums (like Larimer Square in Denver) came back and flourished on their own.
Related material appears on the PRESERVATION and ROADS pages. The cities mentioned appear in various galleries.
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EYES ON THE (MOTHER) ROAD
Some images are offered only with an artistic treatment. The original photograph is not shown. Here to...uh...illustrate is Rusty the truck driver, the fourth image from the Home Page Slideshow.
I had long wanted to bring this Santa Rosa NM truckstop mascot "to life" with a close-up showing his 1950s charm. But the original shot languished in my files for 20 months. It's a faded and rusted sign fragment taken in the shade. Pretty dull stuff.
Rusty (my name for him) appears on both sides of this iconic sign. On the often-photographed east side, neon on his face has been destroyed. This shot is from the west side where much of the neon is intact, and where he faces left toward Rt 66.
Using Photoshop on my shadow-free image, I defined the glass tubing against his faded metal skin a few inches away. The result is very different from the original photograph, and I put it on the site as photo-based art.
I then wondered how Rusty would look in a car mirror--flipped horizontally. Perhaps because I had been working close-up to highlight the neon, I was astonished to discover the 66 which had been unseen for six decades! (On-scene, a rearview mirror would faintly capture this.)
Originally the "numbers" were reversed neon loops forming Rusty's eyes and eyebrows with sections between blacked-out. The same tubing outlines his face and extends down to his chin.
Artistic effects make this image work. They bring out something that's real but not intended for viewing, and apparently never before photographed.
And my original? It's back in the files where it belongs. It's not much to look at...and everything's backward.
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ROUTE 66: A (POSSIBLE) RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
A westbound trip on the Mother Road can be a spiritual journey for those prepared to look beyond literal meanings.
John Steinbeck's Route 66 novel The Grapes of Wrath contains many possible Biblical links, according to scholars. This material is readily available but has not crossed the boundary to Route 66 travel literature. I can't find even a single passing reference to it! This is called a "silo effect" and what follows is a first effort to break it down.
Steinbeck was raised as an Episcopalian and his adult views on religion reflected a great deal of searching. He was exposed to Bible stories from an early age and used them in his works. Googling Bible Grapes of Wrath novel produces a wealth of material from many viewpoints: 9,690,000 at last check.
Here are just three examples. The Biblical Job (pronounced: JOE-bb) and his family become Steinbeck's Joad (JOE-dd) family. Job/Joad are good people suffering greatly from circumstances beyond their control and comprehension, and from the former comes the term "Trials of Job." Jesus Christ, a secondary figure in the novel, is mirrored in itinerant preacher Jim Casy. And "grapes of wrath" is from the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" which comes from the final book of the Bible (Revelation 14:19-20).
A westbound trip can also recall the Crucifixion in a mountainous desert. Jesus was on the cross perhaps up to six-hours. That was a typical driving time in the 1930s from the mountainous desert around Oatman AZ and Needles CA, until a return to life with a dramatic green-up nearing the coast or Central Valley. Many migrants drove the desert at night to avoid brutal heat, so greenery would suddenly appear at the start of a new day.
These similarities, and many others noted by scholars, would have occurred to 1930s American refugees, at least subconsciously, as they struggled through. Nearly all were raised as Christians, many as fundamentalists who believe every word of the Bible is divinely inspired and literally true. Their experience made Route 66 unique among American highways.
Some of this appears in both the book and movie versions of The Grapes of Wrath. But to my knowledge, no Route 66 road or tourism material mentions any of it, even in passing. In 25+ books, many promotional publications, and travel websites The Grapes of Wrath is simply the saga of the fictional Joad family during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl.
A westbound trip on today's Rt 66 with its dramatic changes near the end could take on a great deal of additional meaning for Christians, especially those who read and contemplate the novel.
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This may read like veiled Bible-thumping but my religious views are not expressed here, I'm simply respecting the faith of others. And wouldn't this "Do Unto Others" novelty be nice if it caught on? Amen and A-MEN!
Government is properly barred from promotion of this kind, so the burden falls on individuals, associations, businesses...and religious groups.
("The Wrath of Dust" in the HISTORY section explores 1930s economic and social conditions.)
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YOU CAN'T GO BACK AGAIN...AND SHOULDN'T WANT TO
Route 66 is being homogenized, pasteurized and sanitized for mass-consumption, both here and elsewhere. I hate to contribute to this dumbing-down of American history--although that's exactly what I'm doing (see above).
Now that Disney has a Rt 66-based attraction in California, here's a reality check to counter the pretty pictures (both still and animated).
Interstate highways, fast food joints, and chain motels condemned today for their boring sameness are actually improvements. We wanted them, we needed them, we got them, and we're better off for them.
Consider the realities of Rt 66 in, say, your new 1957 Chevy:
. Many narrow and twisting two-lane sections were known locally as "Blood Alley."
. The guy coming at you might be legally drinking and driving.
. You sat on a bench seat without seat belts, air bags, or other protection.
. Air conditioning and cruise control were for rich folks in Cadillacs, not you.
. Open windows brought in noise, dust and insects.
. Your entertainment system was a single-speaker AM radio that picked up power lines, neon signs and thunderstorms.
. Trucks and Greyhound buses filled oncoming lanes to the brim.
. A good (but hard) day might be 300 miles (480 km).
Nostalgic yet? But wait, there's more...
. You drove single-file through dinky towns, perhaps behind a string of trucks, enduring 25 MPH zones, parallel parkers, and red lights.
. Although gas stations were branded, clean restrooms--or competent repairs--depended entirely on the owner.
. Every restaurant was different, likely run by a local operator. Every food stop required due diligence, first outside then inside (and a tip was expected).
. Almost every motel was a one-off, requiring you to scrutinize the sign, inspect the room, and haggle over the rate. Motel chains were just starting and toll-free phone reservations came much later.
. America smoked like a chimney, with 45% admitting their habit to Gallup in 1954. Air-conditioning was not widespread, so restaurants and motel rooms typically had a stale cigarette odor.
. Black travelers faced tremendous problems even getting the basics--food, lodging, gas and restrooms. Many businesses openly (and until 1964 legally) refused to serve them. Entire "sundown towns" were openly racist, warning Blacks not to stay there, or even drive through after dark. "Jim Crow" laws were widespread, well beyond the South.
Today's self-service gas pumps, McDonald's and even lowly Motel 6 actually represent improvements. If not they wouldn't have spread and endured. I value them for their efficiency if nothing else. I wouldn't want to go back in time--and have to stay there.
Route 66 makes for a great (and multiple-day) theme park experience, minus expensive tickets and long lines. It's wonderful to enjoy the Mother Road...without trucks, Greyhounds, congested downtowns, leaded gasoline fumes, unpredictable food and unexpectedly bad motels.
In other words: without all that ugly reality!
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Published in the Federation News by the National Historic Route 66 Federation.
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GUILTY, WITH AN EXPLANATION
Some things on rt66pix.com look better than they normally appear.
Take "USA Steel & Rust" from the opening slideshow. Captioning indicates this was taken in strong sunlight after rain. Directional sun creates all-important shadows, moisture creates deep coloring in the metal. On an ordinary day, in ordinary light, the 1929 steel is almost as dull as the paint. And letter "U" is very hard to spot without the shadow.
Many good photographs, both here and elsewhere, take advantage of unusual lighting and/or weather conditions. Many are made within an hour of sunrise or sunset, even if the sun is not in the image. Peak travel time, mid-day in mid-summer, is generally awful for photography--especially on Rt 66 from OK westward. There's just too much sun!
Some scenes change over time or disappear. Take an extreme case--the Sidewalk Highway around Afton and Narcissa OK. During 2011 two things happened: (1) A lovely stone marker was installed describing the pavement's historic significance and (2) Nearly all the historic pavement was buried under dirt and stone, plus crude grading tore up chunks of original asphalt!
In a more typical example, the 1949 Nash Airflyte that's the opening thumbnail for the "Rusted & Busted" gallery got hauled away. So rt66pix.com is now showing something that's no longer there. Other things fall down, get demolished or fenced off. Many are hit with graffiti or vandalism. Some even get fresh paint! It's impossible to keep up with all of it.
So the plea is "Guilty, With an Explanation" for showing Route 66 and other locations better than you will likely see them. This is neither fair nor balanced...but it can't be helped.
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