Now Russell Olsen’s best-selling collections featuring Route 66 filling stations, main streets, motor courts, cafés, campgrounds, honky-tonks, truck stops, and barbecue joints as they appeared both in their heyday and today is available in one package. For more than 30 years, Route 66 was America’s main east-west artery, pointing the nation toward all the promise that California represented. To serve these travelers, Route 66 boasted bustling commercial hubs, many of which remain today, many more of which crumbled long ago. All of the sites included here—150 in all—are shown both during their mid-century heydays and as they appear today. Taken together, the marvelous visual and descriptive elements assembled here—period postcards and imagery, specially commissioned maps, and Olsen’s own photography and capsule histories of the sites featured—comprise a unique, state-by-state look back at America’s Main Street.

Reorganized, updated and expanded ed. of earlier work with same title proper.

The use of cars and trucks over the past century has remade American geography—pushing big cities ever outward toward suburbanization, spurring the growth of some small towns while hastening the decline of others, and spawning a new kind of commercial landscape marked by gas stations, drive-in restaurants, motels, tourist attractions, and countless other retail entities that express our national love affair with the open road. By its very nature, this landscape is ever changing, indeed ephemeral. What is new quickly becomes old and is soon forgotten. In this absorbing book, John Jakle and Keith Sculle ponder how “Roadside America” might be remembered, especially since so little physical evidence of its earliest years survives. In straightforward and lively prose, supplemented by copious illustrations—historic and modern photographs, advertising postcards, cartoons, roadmaps—they survey the ways in which automobility has transformed life in the United States. Asking how we might best commemorate and preserve this part of our past—which has been so vital economically and politically, so significant to the cultural aspirations of ordinary Americans, yet so often ignored by scholars who dismiss it as kitsch—they propose the development of an actual outdoor museum that would treat seriously the themes of our roadside history. Certainly, museums have been created for frontier pioneering, the rise of commercial agriculture, and the coming of water- and steam-powered industrialization and transportation, especially the railroad. Is now not the time, the authors ask, for a museum forcefully exploring the automobile’s emergence and the changes it has brought to place and landscape? Such a museum need not deny the nostalgic appeal of roadsides past, but if done properly, it could also tell us much about what the authors describe as “the most important kind of place yet devised in the American experience.” John A. Jakle is Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Keith A. Sculle is the former head of research and education at the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. They have coauthored such books as America’s Main Street Hotels: Transiency and Community in the Early Automobile Age; Motoring: The Highway Experience in America; Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age; and The Gas Station in America.

The ultimate guide to America’s most famous highway. The Route 66 Encyclopedia is the complete resource on the history, landmarks and personalities that have made the USA’s most iconic highway. Stretching over two thousand miles from Chicago to Santa Monica, Route 66 journeys directly to the heart of the United States. An encyclopedia with a twist, The Route 66 Encyclopedia presents alphabetical entries on everything from Bobby Troup's anthem "Route 66" to The Grapes of Wrath, illustrated with hundreds of photos of the highway and its sights. With references to the old (including the history of the U Drop Inn Café in Texas) and new (a section about the recent Cars movie), The Route 66 Encyclopedia provides a sweeping look at a highway that has become more than just a road. An atlas with 25 current and historical maps will guide your journey from the Abbylee Motel to Zuzax, New Mexico, taking in all of the essential landmarks along the way.

The author of the best-selling and critically acclaimed Route 66 Adventure Handbook returns with Route 66 Quick Reference Encyclopedia. In one handy volume, novices and seasoned roadies alike have fast and easy access to all of the essential information about America’s most famous, beloved, and culturally significant highway. Presenting a list of important terms accompanied by descriptive articles and illustrations, the guide details the route’s history—including the origins of the term "Mother Road" and the slogan "Get Your Kicks on Route 66"—as well as its commemorative festivals, quirkiest attractions, and useful highway terms. Fascinating trivia will allow road warriors to impress friends and fellow travelers with their knowledge of the route, while a supplemental list directs dedicated fans to more detailed information on one of the most historic and treasured drives in America. Finally, a set of maps provides both general orientation and points out significant attractions through the use of custom icons. Route 66 Quick Reference Encyclopedia is truly an A-to-Z guide to the absolute best of the Mother Road!

The story of the landmark St. Louis skyscraper, the Continental-Life, built in classic art-deco style in the 1920s. The story of the building's birth, by an Arkansas business tycoon, the million-dollar bank robbery within its walls and the building's deterioration and eventual rebirth.