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On May 10th and 11th, 1934 a dust storm blew 300 million tons of
topsoil away... Over the years, thanks largely to the genius of novelist John Steinbeck
and movie producer John Ford,
U.S. Highway 66 became closely associated with America's memory of the Great
Depression. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
described the flight of the mythical Joad family out of rain-starved Oklahoma and down
Highway 66 to southern California. He wrote that "66 is the path of a people in
flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking
ownership ... they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and
the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight."'
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Steinbeck's classic 1939 novel, combined with the
1940 film recreation of the epic odyssey, served to immortalize Route 66 in the American
consciousness. An estimated 210,000 people migrated to California to escape the
despair of the Dust Bowl.
Route 66 was indeed the road of flight, but that image by
itself was only a part of the story. In fact, the highway between Chicago and Los
Angeles was the road of opportunity as well as flight: it brought business to the
impoverished Southwest and provided new ways to earn a living for multitudes of people
along its course-even during the Dust Bowl years that decimated much of the country
through which Route 66 ran.
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John
Steinbeck
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Despite the dust and the Depression and the flight of their
neighbors, there were people who saw an opportunity in what was happening. Those
were the people who bought or built highway businesses on the edge of Route 66 and cashed
in on what had become a torrent of traffic, catering to the basic needs of food, shelter,
and fuel for the people in flight. -
Despite the dust and the Depression and the flight of their
neighbors, there were people who saw an opportunity in what was happening. Those
were the people who bought or built highway businesses on the edge of Route 66 and cashed
in on what had become a torrent of traffic, catering to the basic needs of food, shelter,
and fuel for the people in flight. - From Route 66 by Quinta Scott & Croce Kelly.
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Route 66 History Page 3