Route 66 Birthplace

In the 1920s the United States was knitting its patchwork of roads into a numbered national highway system. Officials from several states worked out the routes and numbers, and the highway running from Chicago southwest to Los Angeles was originally slated to carry a different number. The story goes that Missouri and Oklahoma officials pushed for the number 66, which was available and had a pleasing ring to it.

On April 30, 1926, officials meeting in Springfield sent a telegram accepting the number 66 for the new highway. That is the moment Springfield marks as the birthplace, the day the road got the name that would become legend. The highway was formally established later that year, and the number 66 was on its way to becoming part of American culture.

Route 66 ran about 2,400 miles from Chicago to the Pacific, cutting through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. In the 1930s it became the escape route for families fleeing the Dust Bowl for California, a role John Steinbeck captured in The Grapes of Wrath, where he called it the mother road, the road of flight.

After the war, Route 66 became the great American vacation highway, lined with motor courts, drive-ins, trading posts, and roadside oddities competing for the traveler's eye. A hit song urged everyone to get their kicks on Route 66, and a television show cemented its cool. It was a road that generated its own culture.

The interstate highway system, begun in the 1950s, eventually replaced Route 66 with faster, straighter freeways that bypassed the small towns strung along the old road. In 1985 Route 66 was officially decommissioned, removed from the highway system, and many of its towns and businesses withered as traffic sped past on the interstate.

But the road refused to die. Preservationists, nostalgic travelers, and the towns themselves kept the old alignment alive, restoring neon signs and vintage motels and marking the historic route. Today Route 66 is a destination in its own right, drawing travelers from around the world to drive the surviving stretches, and Springfield's square sits at the story's very beginning.

Springfield is the largest city in the Missouri Ozarks, a regional hub with a walkable historic downtown centered on Park Central Square, where the birthplace marker stands. The square is ringed with older commercial buildings and has seen a revival of shops, cafes, and cultural spaces.

The city makes a good base for exploring the surrounding Ozarks and its Route 66 heritage, and it holds attractions of its own, including the sprawling Wonders of Wildlife museum and aquarium. From here the old highway threads on toward the drive-ins and roadside relics of southwest Missouri.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.