What caused the death of Route 66?
Yasmin van der Meer
2025-04-28 21:20:20
Count answers: 3
Ironically, the public lobby for rapid mobility and improved highways that gained Route 66 its enormous popularity in earlier decades also signaled its demise beginning in the mid-1950s. Mass support for an interstate system of divided highways markedly increased during President Dwight D. Eisenhower's second term in the White House. Congress responded to the president's commitment by passing the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which provided a comprehensive financial umbrella to underwrite the cost of the national interstate and defense highway system. In accord with the legislation, Interstate 40 west from Oklahoma City through the Texas Panhandle, New Mexico, northern Arizona, and finally ending in Barstow, California would replace the major segment of U.S. 66. By 1970, two equally modern four-lane highways, Interstate 55 between Chicago and St. Louis and Interstate 44, which absorbed the old diagonal section from St. Louis to Oklahoma City, replaced the remaining segments of the original Route 66. The last outdated, poorly maintained vestiges of U.S. Highway 66 succumbed to the interstate system in October 1984 when Interstate 40 at Williams, Arizona, replaced the final section of the original road. In 1985, the highway was officially decommissioned.
Lees ook
- When was Route 66 first opened?
- What was Route 66 known as in 1926?
- How much of the old Route 66 is still drivable?
- What is the most famous stop on Route 66?
- Who first performed Route 66?
- Why is Route 66 in America so famous?
- What is Route 66 most famous nickname?
- Is there a cars town on Route 66?
- Who wrote the most famous Route 66 song?