ot so long ago, journey mattered as much as destination. Between 1926 and the 1960s, Route 66 was the "ultimate road trip" through the essence of pioneer spirit - the American frontier. Route 66 was a two-lane road reaching 2,448-miles. It meandered through Adventureland's undulating hills, mountains and desertland so novel to traveling easterners.

Through frontierland, with its promise of unfettered access to all parts of the once-wild West, and most of all through our Main Streets - the patch towns that grew from Western settlements and, decades later, formed the dots connected by 66, the first federal highway to link the Mississippi River to California's boomtown shores.

Travel worn pavement on Route 66

The route began in Chicago, dipped south to Texas, then snaked through the Southwest to Los Angeles and the Pacific, traversing through eight states. Route 66 was the cross-country highway of choice for 1930s migrants, '40s GIs, and '50s tourists. It carried cars through major towns like Oklahoma City, Amarillo and Albuquerque, but its heart was the in-betweens - dusty places like Tucumcari, NM, Barstow, CA, and Seligman, AZ.

Driving was still an adventure. Windows were left open. Automatic gas pumps, automatic tellers and drive-through speakers had not replaced human contract. And what better vacation than to pack the family and head west to picture-postcard places like the Painted Desert, the Grand Canyon and Hollywood?

" You were actually living instead of being projected through space in some enclosed, air-conditioned vehicle," says Terri Ryburn-LaMonte, who teaches a course on Route 66 at Illinois State University.

Model T

When Depression and dust storms filled Oklahoma with scarred fields and destitute farmers, Okies packed belongings and drove west on 66 looking for fruit-picking work in California. Shippers turned to trucks to augment trains. And, since 66 was assembled from local roads, it acted as a regional highway that streamlined a vast patchwork of commerce and transit.

What grew from this combination of local and national travelers was an individualistic landscape of motels, restaurants and gas stations, built by entrepreneurs who believed drivers passing at 35, maybe-45 mph would be enticed by colorful signage, pull off and participate in whatever good or service was for sale. The road, in effect was an advertisement for itself. And the towns along it were happy to reap the economic benefits.

Then, in 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, enamored of smooth roads he saw in Germany during World War II, launched the Interstate Highway System as an American Autobahn - a limited access, high-speed way to ride.

Route 66 - Chicago to Los Angeles

In the Southwest, it was I-40. Each year another segment opened, often paralleling Route 66, sometimes bypassing a town by mere yards. Ribbons of smooth macadam unrolled across the land, placing travelers atop their landscape rather than within it. In 1985, the government decommissioned U.S. 66 into official nonexistence. With each new section of interstate, towns whose livelihoods rested upon the attractions-at-roadside layout were left to grapple with the consequences. The lucky few located at freeway exits, like Seligman, hung on - barely. The in-betweens were left to fall away. For the people of those places, life - and landscape - changed forever.

But a rekindled interest in Route 66 is emerging. Summers across the highway corridor feature Route 66 "fun runs," car shows, parades, and cook-outs. The appetite for history is ravenous, and 66 provides a living history of itself.

Slowly, places like Seligman are re-emerging. In Arizona, one of the longest uninterrupted stretches of the old route remains intact, with state designation as Historic Route 66. The stretch is 158 miles from Seligman to Topock. There are also portions of the route still traveled today east of Seligman. In fact, all the communities along I-40 in Arizona were once "Route 66 Towns."

"This small-town America doesn't exist anymore, but, a generation beyond, we'd like to think it still does," says John Craft, an Arizona State University professor who produces documentaries on his state's segment of Route 66.

The men who built it called Route 66 a road to the future in an age when forward, not backward, was the fashionable place to look.

Dustbowl travelers near Seligman, AZ

But today, the interstates tell America's story: unimpeded destination without process or distraction. Frontier domesticated with call boxes every half-mile. The Disneyland train has become an express.

The people of Seligman will say the interstates ignore a sunshine America - a land where motel guests still talk to each other. Where the gas-station bathroom doesn't require a key. Where the road promises adventure and rampant, irrepressible, entrepreneurial individuality.

Maybe that land never existed. Maybe it doesn't matter. It will exist now, if people along the Route have anything to say.

"When Route 66 was alive, Seligman was a place to pass through. Now, it's a destination."

Ted Anthony, Associated Press (The Spokesman-Review, Spokane Wash./Coeur d'Adlene, Idaho, 11/30/97)