The Vintage Reader

I've written a bit here about Route 66, but the other day as I was driving back from the outlet mall (one last visit to Carter's) I remembered that I was actually on another historic U.S. highway: U.S. Route 62. Known in my neck of the woods as Niagara Falls Boulevard (and partially, Bailey Ave.), Route 62 is the only even-numbered U.S. highway that goes from Mexico (via El Paso, Texas) to Canada (via Niagara Falls); the reason this is unusual is that even-numbered highways run east-west, while odd-numbered highways run north-south. And if you play Traveler IQ on Facebook as much as I do, you know that Mexico is actually south of the U.S. and Canada is north.

Route 62 is actually partially responsible for the creation of Route 66. Back in the mid-1920s, when the interstate highway system was being developed, the plan was for the six major interstates to end in zero. Because each of these zero-ending highways would go from one end of the country to the other (coast-to-coast or border-to-border), they would be heavily traveled and bring a lot of business to the communities they ran through. Consequently, when Route 60 and Route 62 were both proposed, everybody wanted Route 60 because of its coveted zero. Nobody wanted Route 62. As a compromise, an engineer from Oklahoma suggested Route 66 for the Chicago-to-LA highway. Route 60 would end in Springfield, Missouri, and Route 62 would continue northeast through Illinois (for a mile), Kentucky, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to Western New York.

Today, Route 60 is nearly transcontinental after all, traveling from Virginia to Arizona, and Route 62 goes from one border to the other, but Route 66 gets all the attention and the big travel bucks from road-tripping tourists ("big" is relative, of course). Because history is weird that way.

(And BTW, the title of this post is in reference to Chuck Berry's version of "Route 66," which is probably my least favorite version of the song ever. Mainly that's because he calls Kingman Kingsman (twice!) and pronounces "Barstow" so that the last syllable rhymes with "cow" instead of "low." For all I know, that's an alternate pronunciation, but it just sounds wrong. Then there's that whole "I'll meet you/on Route 62" thing. The man really seems to hate Route 66, and I would love to know the history behind that, especially since he grew up close to the Mother Road in St. Louis (actually, East St. Louis—is there any other?).)

[Thanks to The Roads That Built America: The Incredible Story of the U.S. Interstate System, by Dan McNichol, and Wikipedia]