Route 66: America’s First Main Street

This Route 66 book can be hard to find, but if you can find a copy, it’s a nice casual read. The author, Spencer Crump, takes you on a historical road trip. It has the feel of a personal scrapbook or journal with his historical musings on the road and events of the early 66 era of the 20s and 30s.

Crump includes a variety of period postcards, photos and ads to give you a better feel of the time. It’s hard to imagine hotels for a buck a night, 5-cent hamburgers and 22-cent gasoline, but the visual proof is there. There’s even something that gas stations had called, “Service with a Smile”.

Other than the cover, it’s all black and white, which does well with the historical feel of the book. Indeed, it is more than a 66 picture book. One of the real highlights for the road geek or old route fan is copies of Vintage maps from the Automobile Club of Southern California.

Buy the book Route 66 - America's First Main Street
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Copyright 2009 - All the World Travel LLC and Dan Smith

On the Move should be on your bookshelf

If you removed all the text from On the Move, the photos and illustrations could stand alone to make this an excellent book. The book is a cooperation of National Geographic and the Smithsonian Institution and it shows. The book is filled with clear jump-off-the-page pictures dating back to the late 1800’s. I’m so used to thinking of the past in monochrome black and white or at the best brownish sepia. This makes the color from the past so bright with new photos of old transportation equipment from the Smithsonian’s collection. I never imagined the color of the past in the rich red gas pump, the glorious green locomotive, or the 40’s golden yellow Dodge school bus.

On the Move gives a great overview of not only facts and figures of transportation, but societal changes that were part of it. Thankfully, it’s getting harder to imagine a time when there was a need for “The Negro Motorist Green-Book” to find a place where they could buy gasoline or get a meal or warm bed for the night. Suburbia grew first from mass transit and then from speedy travel on high speed non-stop freeways. A new culture was built around the car, while other urban cultures were split in two by Interstate highways.

For the lover of all roads or the Road Geek like me, the photos of road building, old roads, gas stations and even advertising to take me back to a time. This was a time before I was born, when modern transportation and travel was like an infant with so much to grow and so much to create.

This book is partly based on the Smithsonian’s exhibit “America on the Move” which just reopened in Washington, DC. The History Channel also produced a DVD also called On the Move 1876-2000.







Copyright 2008 All the World Travel and oldroutes.com