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, while PRESERVATION highlights 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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GET YOUR KITSCH ON ROUTE 66
2026 is the Centennial Year of Route 66...but unfortunately 100 years was just too long to wait. We should have done our celebrating years ago, there was a lot more to see back then. Much has been destroyed by the elements, progress, or vandalism.
This is a postcard from Route 66 near its peak, the early 50s. The shiny green car appears to be a 51 or 52 Dodge. That building at Glenrio TX still stands...sort of.
Route 66 always was transitory and transactional. Few roadside structures were built for the ages. Encounters were one-offs between strangers: people passing through at gas stations, cafes, motels and souvenir shops. The road was a long commercial strip designed around human (and automobile) needs and gratification.
"How about an ice cold Coke?" "Today ONLY: Sale on Fuzzy Dice! Buy One, Get One FREE!"
You can almost hear Nat King Cole, Chuck Berry, or perhaps the Rolling Stones singing "Get your kitsch on Route 66!"
The road itself (according to highway bureaucrats) made it to 1985, or 69 years until the last stretch was bypassed and the U.S. 66 designation retired. I suspect that was the best time to sightsee--trucks had shifted to the Interstates, remnants abounded for photographs, and commercialized nostalgia had not yet kicked in.
Much has been lost in the quarter-century I have been driving and photographing Route 66. Although new things have been added, they cannot compensate for all that has vanished, fallen into a debris pile, or (worse) been tagged by vandals. That "First Stop in Tex" gas station suffered all three fates:
The original road now exists only in memories, words and photographs. The song was a fantasy from the get-go. The realities are explored in a companion essay "You Can't Go Back Again...and Shouldn't Want To" later in this Blog.
The trip is still worth making in 2026: The Year of the Trinket. Enjoy what you can, while you can. It will only get worse up ahead.
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Side notes: The divided windshield on the green Dodge (two pieces of glass with a chrome strip between) dates it to no later than 1952. The car at the pump looks like an older Oldsmobile. Gas was pumped by an attendant, there was no self-service. The pumps are taller than the man, and likely had regular and Ethyl (premium) leaded gas, with the third for diesel. The orange truck is typical of the era--it has no sleeper unit. Trucks were used for local or regional hauling then, most long-distance freight went by railroad. The Rock Island RR ran just south of Rt 66 here, with a depot and daily passenger service! The depot stood until 1955 and the railroad ran until 1980. In the far distance, the "Little Juarez Diner" appears just before the Teague-design Texaco in the far distance (both remain today). Some of the low concrete curbs still exist between lanes of pavement on the NM side of Glenrio (Texas Exit 0 off Interstate-40).
The second image is from 2025, taken from a closer TX vantage point. Signs were changed when Phillips 66 modernized its logo around 1960. The original "First Stop" sign was replaced with the larger backlit unit and the building got new paint including the red triangles. (Since this photo, the building was painted white, and the sign was restored and relit.) This is part of an ambitious plan to create a marijuana oasis, centered around a dispensary on the NM side and lodging in motel units in back of this scene. But there's a problem: While NM sells the stuff, in TX posession is a crime. The plan has undergone several alterations, and this building remains a shell.
Foreign tourism to the US is way down and fuel prices are way up. Trump Administration policies have put out an UN-Welcome Mat. This is especially bad for Route 66 in its Centennial Year. For decades the Mother Road has been a much bigger draw to foreigners than to Americans.
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Suggested music: "One Toke Over The Line" by Brewer and Shipley, or the Lawrence Welk Show version by Gail and Dale on YouTube. It SMOKES!
The best way to travel remains Jerry McClanahan's EZ66 Guide, now in a Sixth Edition for 2026, available through www.national66.org
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TAKE IT EASY ON ROUTE 66
The debut single by The Eagles happened on Route 66...sort of. "Take it Easy" reached #12 in the summer of 1972.
It tells of a young man hitchhiking in Winslow AZ, and getting checked out by "a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford." The song's hook is the role reversal, and the ambiguous afterward. Did she pick him up?
The actual location may have been Flagstaff, and the truck may have been a Toyota. Recollections of 1970s rock musicians can be, um, hazy. But for a fact, the "girl" had to be 16 to drive in Arizona, meaning she is in her 70s now, perhaps 80s.
Hitchhiking was common on Route 66 but is banned on the Interstates. I-40 around Winslow didn't open until 1979. So the song references a world that no longer exists.
The lyrics were not scribbled in the truck after she stopped for him. "Babe I'm gonna put you in a famous rock-and-roll song and I'm not ignoring you, but I've got to get the words right!"
All we're told is: she slowed down...to look. And although he already has "seven women" on his mind--he keeps pining after number eight even as the music fades.
Glen Frey furnished the line about the girl and truck after Jackson Browne started writing and got stuck. Their joint (pun alert!) project was completed in Los Angeles and recorded in London. It's been part of Route 66 nostalgia and roadtrips ever since, and even inspired a photo-op in Winslow's downtown (shown in the Opening Slideshow gallery)
Too bad cars no longer have cassette or CD players--I have the album in both formats. In a final nod to reality, "Take it Easy" is so far back in time many Oldies stations won't play it.
A line in the song seems to anticipate that: "We will never be here again."
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FAKE NEWS: THE FSA IMAGES
The photographs have been with us all of our lives. Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange is the best-known, but there are others. The Walker Evans gallery of Alabama sharecroppers. The Arthur Rothstein shot of a little boy shielding his eyes from an Oklahoma dust storm.
All three images were staged. They were posed and arranged, and would violate journalistic standards today. But at the time, the 1930s, this practice was accepted. And of course the FSA (the US government's Farm Security Administration) wasn't doing journalism. It was pumping out government propaganda: Fake News!
Many FSA photographers became legends, these three especially. Dorothea Lange was a successful portrait photographer in San Francisco until the economy tanked. She knew how to pose people and did a masterful job with Florence Owens Thompson, known to the world as Migrant Mother. The children are also posed...perfectly...in the iconic shot (above), adding to its strength. But it shows an artificially arranged and curated version of reality.
Lange's earlier images during their ten-minute encounter are of mother and children, posing themselves for her huge tripod-mounted camera. They didn't really come to "life" until she posed them.
Walker Evans posed people and rearranged furniture in his "real" scenes to heighten artistic impact. He would later call his style "lyric documentary" a term that still has not crossed over into journalism textbooks. Nor should it.
Arthur Rothstein choreographed his Dust Bowl family scene and basically faked the environmental conditions. It made for good art, but created lies masquerading as truth.
The real problem was the unquestioning acceptance of these and other images by newspaper and magazine editors of the 1930s, who passed them on to the public without context or explanation. Many times they weren't even credited, implying they may have come from the paper's own staff or news agencies. (These clippings are typical.)
Later in 1936, Lange's work was used to illustrate John Steinbeck's. His feature articles for this same paper grew into his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath.
This was the first pairing of Lange and Steinbeck--the two artists who created the Great Depression/Dust Bowl icons of photography and literature. At this point both are, in a sense, finding their artistic voices. Lange succeeded within minutes by moving in closer and posing her subjects, eliminating the older girl entirely. Steinbeck, a promising 34 year-old writer, relied on his notes for this series which took him into migrant camps. He had to overcome massive insecurities about his talent before his novel started flowing.
Lange, age 40, is again uncredited (her image was free to the paper) and the caption is months out-of-date: the family had moved on. In contrast, the paper gave Steinbeck byline credit and payment.
Government work kept many artists and writers afloat, and perhaps from promoting different ideologies, during those lean years. They were co-opted into working for the FSA by economic pressures. Only Walker Evans, always difficult, openly refused to make propaganda and was soon let go.
The FSA negatives survive and have been digitized. They are in the public domain, helping explain why so many textbooks use them. Most FSA photographs were mundane news release illustrations with an upbeat caption. These few reached the status of art through artifice.
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The Migrant Mother backstory is fascinating but horribly tangled, with many puzzling aspects that may never be sorted out. Even the coinage of Migrant Mother is unclear--it is not on Dorothea Lange's captions (shown alongside the original scratched print) or in her log notes.
The photographs were taken at a pea-pickers camp outside Nipomo CA, along US 101 north of Santa Maria, in February 1936. Lange made seven negatives with a huge 4x5 film camera on a tripod, moving closer over ten minutes or so. The right image in the March 10 newspaper was taken before the left one.
The clean and stylishly-dressed older girl on the rocking chair was omitted from the iconic image. She is plenty old enough to help care for the younger children. REALITY CHECK: Her inclusion would have changed everything. This is a journalistically-sound photograph, an "establishing shot" long used in TV news and movies.
The famous Migrant Mother image is posed and arranged: a portrait with a hand on her chin, the distant pensive gaze and the back view of the younger children's heads. The baby is asleep after breast-feeding. No earlier scene is similar. Lange used hand poses and gestures extensively in her studio portraits and continued this in her FSA work.
The San Francisco News edition of March 10 was the first to run Lange's images. They appear on page three and the iconic shot was passed over! (The headline also misuses and misspells "squalor.") Lange tipped the paper and supplied the photos. The next day, March 11 (not shown), the iconic image finally appeared--again uncredited--with an editorial supporting improved conditions for migrants.
Lange got only a thank-you letter from the paper which addressed her as "My dear Miss Lang." The News was number four in a four newspaper city, but had a history of supporting progressive causes. It hired Steinbeck to write feature stories about migrants and gave him proper credit.
Lange later had an assistant retouch the film negative of the iconic shot--government property--removing Florence Owens Thompson's left thumb. She was gripping the tent pole and Lange considered this distracting. Lange's FSA boss was furious, believing--incorrectly--that his photographers were accurately recording what they found. This retouching speaks volumes about Lange's mindset and intentions: she was making artistic portraits outside, not illustrating news. (In fact, she had never worked in journalism.) Prints made before and after the alteration survive.
Dorothea Lange got many facts wrong (the car tires were not sold), and she did not record Thompson's name. Viewers lacking even a solid caption were forced to conjure up the rest of Migrant Mother's story--and, since it was 1936, probably guessed the worst. Actually, the rest of the family, father and boys, were in town getting their car repaired. The family was struggling, not destitute. Within days, the family drove on to another camp and did not benefit from food rushed to Nipomo because of Lange's news tip and photos.
Many migrants, especially minorities, endured far worse conditions and were stranded without a car. They were largely invisible in the openly-racist society (segregation laws etc.) and their plight went undocumented. It wasn't until Whites were victims that government and the news media became interested.
In August 1936, The New York Times ran the iconic image, heavily altered with the two children removed and an incorrect caption, to illustrate a general agricultural story.
It's disputed what Lange may have told Thompson about her purpose and intentions. She may have deliberately avoided recording (or even asking) Thompson's name to spare the family unwanted publicity. Or perhaps she just forgot. FSA photos of people in distress frequently did not include names, but identifying information was provided on "positive" stories--grateful rural folks helped by government programs. (This practice was inconsistent.)
Lange's daily log notes about the camp are vague--there's nothing specifically about this encounter. And Thompson barely mentioned the photo session when the rest of her family returned later in the day.
We don't know when Lange recognized the value of her final image in Nipomo. Validation, of sorts, happened when The San Francisco News ran it. But Lange had given them free prints, and her future icon was only the third pick of the number four paper.
In the 1940s, Florence Owens Thompson saw her image in a magazine and wrote to it, complaining. The letter was forwarded to Lange, who did not respond. Thompson's life improved in that decade, with World War II bringing full employment. The Social Security Act took effect in 1936, the year of the photograph, but farm workers were not covered until it was amended in 1950.
The family was able to abandon migrant farm work when the parents found conventional jobs in Modesto CA. The children reached adulthood, a story well told in Bill Ganzel's book below. Florence and some of the children resented the photo, feeling it exploited, misrepresented and stereotyped them. Florence had at least one Cherokee Indian parent, but it's unlikely she mentioned this.
Migrant Mother's identity was lost to history for four decades. Then in 1978, near the end of her life, Thompson wrote to her local newspaper in Modesto, complaining she basically had been tricked, lied to, and was never paid for posing. The image was shot for a government project, and therefore in the public domain.
Lange's perseverance and artistry--alone--created this image. Her story, told decades later, is that she was exhausted and driving home from a month of photographing Great Depression misery. She passed the camp, drove on for miles, then turned back. Without her compassion and work ethic, the scene would have been lost, and very possibly emergency food would not have been sent. Perhaps her weariness explains the inaccurate and incomplete notes. Lange had a lot to juggle: she was a wife and mother too.
Migrant Mother is widely regarded as Lange's finest work, but she received only a modest government salary. And eight months after making the iconic photograph she was fired! (The FSA would rehire and fire her twice more by 1939.)
Nothing marks the photo site along what is now a freeway. A school has been built nearby, but much remains as it was: a rich farm field. Huge machines like the "Pixall BH100" have replaced human pea-pickers. Nipomo, a city of 18,000, has a Dorothea Lange Elementary School and a Migrant Mother plaque downtown.
Lange and Thompson lived 85 miles (135 km) apart for decades, under very different circumstances. Lange, despite suffering polio as a child and walking with a limp, had a far more comfortable life. Her commitment to social justice seems genuine--this was far more than government work to her. Lange died in 1965 at age 70, respected and well-known in photography circles.
Thompson died in 1983 at age 80. At the end, she had her family, Social Security and Medicare, but apparently little else. Her middle-class children had to appeal for donations to help with her end-of-life care and bills.
The image seems to grow in stature with each edition of American History textbooks. While Migrant Mother is universally recognized in the US, the name of her photographer is largely unknown to the general public. Dorothea Lange did other significant photography including at Japanese-American Internment Camps during World War II. Walker Evans later was dismissive of his FSA work, although it is highly regarded today, perhaps the pinnacle of his long career. Arthur Rothstein went on to head the photography department at Look magazine.
And John Steinbeck wrote a ponderous 75 word opening sentence in his newspaper feature story! A competent editor should have intervened (perhaps this one coined "squallor"). Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (opening sentence: 25 words) was finally published in April 1939, just in time. Five months later World War II began in Europe, and massive economic stimulus triggered full employment with a labor shortage for California agriculture.
The Great Depression was over and the Okies were yesterday's news. We had something else to worry about.
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For companion stories see "The Wrath of Dust" on the History page.
NBC's Bob Dodson interviewed Florence Owens Thompson in 1979, and the video is on-line at several sites. The children were also interviewed after her death, and a video is available.
Sources: Heyman, Therese Thau (1994) Dorothea Lange American Photographs, Chronicle Books (Exhibition catalog with many images)
Meltzer, Milton (2000) Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life, Syracuse University Press (Standard biography)
Spirn, Anne Whiston (2008) Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs & Reports from the Field, University of Chicago Press
Curtis, James (1989) Mind's Eye, Mind's Truth: FSA Photography Reconsidered, Temple University Press (FSA photo deception)
Ganzel, Bill (1984) Dust Bowl Descent, University of Nebraska Press (Follow-up stories on people in FSA images)
Davis, Lennard J. (2020) lareviewofbooks.org/article/migrant-mother-dorothea-lange-truth-photography/ (March 4, 2020 issue)
Campany, David davidcampany.com/migrant-mother-1936-2/ (Thoughts of a noted photo critic, curator and educator)
Eisen, Erica X. publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-kept-and-the-killed (Essay on FSA negatives censored by hole-punches)
Steinbeck, John (1990) Working Days: The Journals of the Grapes of Wrath, Penguin
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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:
. 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. 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:
. 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 a male armpit for a framing device, something the Bad Boys of Photography, William Klein, Eugene Meatyard and Weegee never did. So there!
. Key West FL and Mobile AL-MS also have new galleries primarily featuring 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!
. 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 glued in place, overcoming wind resistance. Actually, that's a perfectly positioned bale of hay.
. And a new section has been launched for Nostalgia. This covers things we might have preserved but didn't.
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A MILLENNIUM OF CHANGE IN EIGHT YEARS
I recently upgraded cars, moving ahead eight years. I gained collision avoidance using radar (1940s technology) and tire pressure monitoring...but little else. Today's cars and even computers are merely incremental improvements on models of eight years ago.
Our last era of real technological change was the 1980s. IBM introduced its first PC in 1981, legitimizing an infant business, and the World Wide Web was created in 1989, eight years apart. When we linked everything, information moved much faster--largely dooming the US Postal Service, newspapers and magazines. Cell phones and digital cameras started coming in during the 80s too. But everything combined did not equal the change our distant ancestors experienced.
A truly massive shift took place way back in the 1860s, and information was only half of it. For Americans, the continent shrank dramatically. Consider the time from 1861 to 1869--again eight years.
In 1861 we stopped transmitting information across the county the old-fashioned way: by horse relays. Our Pony Express from MO to CA was an idea so old we got it from the Romans who got it from the Babylonians! But with new American technology of coded electrical pulses (dots and dashes) speeding over wires, important information that had taken ten-days of hard riding could arrive in ten-minutes.
Then in 1869 we completed the Transcontinental Railroad. That upgrade was even more dramatic. Families heading west with covered wagons typically had to walk alongside oxen to lighten the load. It was 2,000 miles (3,250 km) to OR or CA, four to five-million steps.
The railroad transformed the trip from five months to five days. This gave emigrants an extra growing season and time to build cabins. Plus the train was cheaper and safer (no more dying of dysentery or cholera), everybody got to sit, and meals were available. The Donner Party would have loved it.
Remarkably, during half of this period the nation was fighting itself. The Civil War raged from 1861-65, leaving more than 700,000 Americans dead, many more wounded or disabled. It remains our deadliest war.
On the frontier, the war both helped and hindered progress. The Pony Express was slapped together in 1860 largely to keep California in the Union while telegraph poles and wires went up. Then the Union ended a long routing squabble over the Transcontinental Railroad by decreeing it would take a Northern route. When the war ended, unemployed men were suddenly available to build it.
We conquered the continent using old technologies: iron and wood, combined with new ones: electricity, steam, and mass production. We joined galvanized iron wires suspended on wooden poles, and bolted sections of iron railroad track laid on wooden ties. Iron is so old the Romans and Babylonians used it.
Next time you read about today's marvels--remember that most improvements are incremental, no matter the gigabytes or megapixels, and they build on older technology. The last big advances were decades ago. Maybe AI (or something) will equal that importance, maybe not.
And remember our ancestors who are no longer around to tell exaggerated stories about The Old Days at Thanksgiving dinners. The mid-1800s generation really lived through tremendous change. Their lives were transformed by modern communications and transportation, upgrades installed during eight momentous years. We struggle to even comprehend that kind of progress today.
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Notes:
. Newspapers and their readers were the first main beneficiaries of the telegraph. Speed was dragged down by manual typesetting, printing and distributing (even mailing!) paper copies. Still, important news from the other coast could reach some of the public within a day, and this improved over time.
. The entire country benefitted, but people in California (or intending to move there) benefitted more.
. For emigrants, it was 4,000,000 to 5,000,000 steps--instead of the (preferred) version above. They felt every last one.
. While early adopters experienced computer-based change in the 1970s or 80s, the Tipping Point for widespread use was later. Cell phones went through a similar trajectory--the first commercial units were in the 1980s. The first commercial digital cameras were also in the 1980s. But here, digital struggled for years to equal the quality of existing technology: film.
. AM radios and Polaroid "instant" cameras were technological miracles...until better technology came along.
. With advances in mining and mass-production, copper wire and steel tracks replaced iron--the best available material at the time. (The Eiffel Tower and U.S. Capitol dome are made of iron.)
. Images show a National Pony Express Association Re-Rider and a typical scene from the NPS Golden Spike site with replica locomotives on display. (I'm a NPEA member.)
. Other related musings appear on the History, Nostalgia and Preservation pages.
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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. The 1970s photo-book Suburbia by Bill Owens is a perfect example, along with work by William Eggleston and Garry Winogrand.
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 ever 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% of adults 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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