History of Route 66

Lt. Edward Fitzgerald Beale, a U.S. Navy officer in the service of the U.S. Army corps of topographical engineers, was ordered by the U.S. War Department to construct a federal wagon road across the 35th Parallel. His secondary orders were to test the practabilaty of the use of camels as pack animals in the southwestern desert. Beale traveled through the present day Kingman in 1857 surveying the road and in 1859 to build the road. The road became part of Highway 66 and Interstate Highway 40. Remains of the wagon road can still be seen from White Cliffs Canyon in Kingman.

Route 66 also recognized as the Will Rogers Highway and known as the Main Street of America or another famous name being the Mother Road, was one of Americas original highways within the U.S. Highway System. Route 66 was completed on November 11, 1926—with road signs erected the following year. The highway, which grew to be one of the most popular and famous roads in America, originally ran from Chicago, Illinois, through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona before stopping in Santa Monica, California, for a grand total of 2,448 miles (3,940 km). It was known in pop culture by both the hit song “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” and the Route 66 television show in the 1960s.