Why Route 66 Played a Critical Role During World War II

Although no longer an official U.S. highway, Route 66 endures in the popular imagination as a symbol of freedom on the road, a path where adventurous souls can leave behind the trappings of everyday life, explore new frontiers, and, to paraphrase songwriter Bobby Troup, get their kicks.

Back in the early 1940s, however, Route 66 served a much different role. Instead of drivers zooming past eclectic roadside attractions, trains of military vehicles were crawling along the roadway, and uniformed personnel were lingering at restaurants. This reflected how the Mother Road was used in service of Uncle Sam as World War II raged across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

One of several federal highways established in 1926, Route 66 quickly became a popular thoroughfare for travelers along the 2,400-mile route that connected Chicago to Los Angeles.

“[One] thing that was kind of unique about the road was it basically followed the railroad all the way west, and it followed a lot of our historic roads like the Santa Fe Trail and the Beale Wagon Road,” says Jim Hinckley, author of multiple books on Route 66. “It was a good southern route for people to avoid winter climates… Most of the route was a little bit warmer and less troublesome than some of the northern routes.”

While the earliest iteration of Route 66 featured stretches of dirt or gravel in rural areas, workers under the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps led to the highway being fully paved by 1938—just in time, it turned out, for the drastic changes that came with America’s entry into World War II.

Following the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the federal government allocated approximately $70 billion toward bolstering war production facilities in California alone. Significant portions went to aircraft plants around Los Angeles and the shipbuilding yards of the San Francisco Bay Area. The buildup spurred a mass migration of job seekers; the population of the three Pacific Coast states increased by nearly 39 percent between 1940 and 1943. Many of these newcomers followed Route 66 on their westward journeys.

Additionally, the military turned inland when selecting areas to train soldiers and stockpile munitions that would eventually be shipped to the other side of the globe. “When the military started looking for locations for these new training centers, there were certain criteria,” Hinckley says. “Transportation was one. How can we move supplies and troops quickly? So, the railroad and Route 66 proximity to metropolitan areas figured into it.”

Some bases were developed from existing facilities. Will Rogers Field of Oklahoma City and Arizona’s Kingman Army Airfield, for example, were transformed from commercial airports into official military bases and aerial combat training schools. Others, like the sprawling 18,000-square-mile Desert Training Center across eastern California and western Arizona, rose from the dust to become bustling centers of military activity. Before long, the surrounding communities looked much different than they had prior to the war.

Due to wartime rationing of tires and gasoline, residents of cities and towns along Route 66 saw tourist activity slow to a trickle in favor of convoys ferrying troops and machine parts. As told in Route 66: The Highway and its People by Susan Croce Kelly, the nonstop military movement spurred a steady stream of customers for businesses in prime locations along the corridor. One service station owner in Texas recalled how “we stayed open all night, and we opened the store seven days a week. We got Christmas Eve off and Christmas Day, and that was all.”

Others cashed in on the demand for lodging as bases were being built. Newcomers were willing to rent cabins, spare rooms and even chicken coops for a place to sleep at night.

At certain points along Route 66, the military presence brought unforeseen social change. Residents of Miami, Oklahoma, readily welcomed members of the British Royal Air Force to the Spartan School of Aeronautics, igniting relationships between some of the town’s young ladies and dashing British cadets. In other places, like McLean, Texas, inmates at prisoner-of-war camps interacted with locals while working the fields. Later, some voluntarily moved to the communities where they were once held captive.

Sometimes, the changes brought together subsets of Americans who otherwise might have remained segregated. When a USO club for African Americans was established near Kingman airfield, it shook up the majority-white town’s status quo. “You can imagine what kind of an impact that would have on a small, rural community that was locked in this mindset of being a ‘sundown town,’ and now you’re being forced to accept a [Black] USO club in the middle of your town,” Hinckley notes.

The steady stream of military vehicles also prompted infrastructure improvements to a road that, while now fully paved, remained challenging to navigate in some areas. In one case, the winding, hilly terrain leading to Fort Leonard Wood in Pulaski County, Missouri, prompted engineers to blast through 92 feet of limestone in what was coined the “Hooker Cut.”

“Before that, Route 66 went down a very scenic but very narrow section through the Devil’s Elbow along the Big Piney River and across a very narrow 1920s bridge,” Hinckley explains. “Hooker’s Cut was the deepest highway cut in the United States at the time, and it was the first four-lane segment of Route 66 in the state of Missouri.”

In other sections, particularly in Illinois, hints of the future interstate system surfaced. New four-lane bypass alignments skirted the small towns that Route 66 connected. With wartime resources devoted to other areas and minimal gas tax revenue due to rations, upkeep of the Mother Road was largely neglected. Route 66 was left cracked and dilapidated in some areas following a half-decade of military transport traffic.

After the war, much-needed repairs began arriving in the second half of the decade as the government focus returned to domestic affairs. And as veterans returned home ready to resume chasing their dreams, Route 66 shed its military cover and became an essential thoroughfare for migrants and adventurers once more.