Route 66 is more than a mere highway. On this storied old road, the line between past, the present and even the future are blurred.

ON America’s ‘Mother Road’, the fabled Route 66 between Chicago and Los Angeles, every mile is driven in the shadow of legendary race drivers, automotive and aeronautical pioneers, and even celebrities.

In Kingman, Arizona at the Powerhouse Visitor, a reinforced concrete powers station built in 1907, is today an electric vehicle museum with an acclaimed Route 66 collection. A few miles to the east, a block or so off Route 66, a Spanish pueblo-styled building used as the headquarters for Brown Drilling stands as a tangible link to aviation history.

In the closing years of the 1920s this was the Port Kingman terminal for Transcontinental Air Transport, the first passenger airline in the United States to offer coast to coast service. Playing a pivotal role in the airline’s development, including site selection for terminals along the Route 66 corridor in Arizona and New Mexico was aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh.

At each of the company’s ports a small but luxuriously upholstered Aero Car passenger trailer and tow car with fifth wheel attachment manufactured by the truck division of General Motors was available to transport passengers to the local Harvey House or depot. By combining daylight flights in new Ford Tri-Motor airplanes and nighttime rail travel the coast-to-coast time was cut by twenty-four hours. “For those whose time is too important to waste” was the T.A.T. tag line for initial promotion.

For the inaugural flight on July 8, 1929, a new Ford tri-motor airplane was christened “The City of Los Angeles” by popular film star Mary Pickford. On the first leg of the historic transcontinental flight, Lindbergh himself served as the pilot from Los Angeles to Kingman, Arizona.

During WWII, in Yucca, Arizona along what would become Route 66 in 1952, an auxiliary airfield was established as part of the Kingman Army Airfield complex. In 1953 this airfield was purchased by Ford Motor Company and transformed into a testing center. It was here that Ford put the first-generation Thunderbird through grueling tests under a broiling Arizona sun.

In New Mexico, Arizona and California, the National Old Trails Road promoted as the Main Street of America in a 1913 marketing campaign was a predecessor to Route 66. The ever-growing popularity of this early “highway” was fueled by travel guides such as By Motor to The Golden Gate written by Emily Post in 1915.

As with Route 66 travelers that would follow Post a decade later, she was enamored with the scenic wonders such as the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest, the ancient city of Santa Fe, and the diversity of Native American culture. Edsel Ford, son of Henry Ford, was awestruck by similar sights.

In the summer of 1915, Edsel, Thomas Whitehead, and Horace Calukins Jr, son of Earnest Elmo Calkins, co-founder of Calkins and Holden, the first advertising company to focus exclusively on development of automotive marketing campaigns, set out for California in a 1915 Ford. Accompanying the trio along the National Old Trails Road to the Panama Pacific Exposition were friends from college, Herbert Book, Robert Gray Jr., Frank Book, and William Russel.

Herbert Book and Robert Gray followed Edsel in a new V8 powered Cadillac. Frank Book and William Russel drove a 1915 Stutz 6 – F touring car.

Edsel’s journal that chronicled the adventure provides a glimpse into the challenges faced by pioneering motorists. It also provides a virtual road test of three popular cars from the pre-WWI era.

July 6, 1915, Las Vegas, New Mexico – “Started day in garage. Changed brake band, examined axle. Broke speedometer cable near Santa Fe.”

July 8, 1915, Socorro, New Mexico – “Repaired magneto terminal at noon near Quemado. Bought two gallons gasoline at Quemado at forty cents. Highest price paid on trip.”

July 9, 1915, Holbrook, Arizona – “Drove 45 miles through stunning beauty of Petrified Forest to Holbrook. Took car to garage, had rods tightened and rear axle examined. Found chewed up ring gear and pinion.”

July 15, 1915, Williams. Arizona “Bought some gas and oranges at Seligman. Stutz broke another spring about 15 miles out.”

Scenic wonders were not the only allure of the National Old Trails Road in the southwest. Tremendous publicity for the road was garnered through motor sports.

In November 1914, the course for the Desert Classic from Los Angeles, California to Phoenix, Arizona was charted along the National Old Trails Road to Ash Fork, Arizona. Ensuring international headlines was the competition between world famous racers Barney Oldfield and Louis Chevrolet.

E.L. Cord, best known as the man behind the legendary Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg automotive empire, built the lavish Cordhaven Estate in Beverly Hills several blocks off Sunset Boulevard, Route 66 after 1937. He attended Los Angeles Polytechnic High in Pasadena, California, a town bisected by Route 66 in 1926.

In the teens in partnership with a cousin, Cord acquired trucks to haul ore mines in Arizona. Purportedly his services were provided to mines in Oatman, a famous Route 66 stop today, to the railroad at Topock on the Colorado River. During the same period, he established a pioneering bus line in southern California. And he was a major investor in the Tonopah & Tidewater Railroad that connected Ludlow on Route 66 in the Mojave Desert with Tonopah, Nevada.

Route 66 is more than a drive. It is an opportunity to experience the world of Edsel Ford, Louis Chevrolet, Charles Lindbergh, and tens of thousands of travelers that followed through the scenic wonderland of the American southwest during the last century.

   Written by Jim Hinckley of Jim Hinckley’s America