$10 Million Slated for Restoration of Historic Route 66 From Associated Press

New kicks are in store for Route 66, now that President Clinton has signed a law that supports state, local and private efforts to preserve the “mother road” with $10 million over 10 years.

U.S. 66, commissioned in 1926 and decommissioned in 1985, traversed eight states and 2,448 miles between Chicago and Santa Monica (“Route 66 Lives On, Only Now It’s Memory Lane,” by Paul Dean, May 27). It inspired a 1960s television series about traveling the West and songs by Nelson Riddle and Bobby Troupe.

The “get your kicks on Route 66” lyrics are Troupe’s. The “mother road” label belongs to John Steinbeck and his 1930s Dust Bowl classic “The Grapes of Wrath.” Those displaced Oklahomans weren’t the only ones to head west on U.S. 66. After World War II, it became the thing to do.

“America became more mobile than it had ever been,” said Eric Szeman, co-owner of Albuquerque’s Route 66 Malt Shop, who made the Route 66 trek himself with his parents in 1954. “The mass migration westward was pretty much handled by Route 66.”

Szeman hopes Albuquerque will get a hefty share of the $10 million earmarked for Route 66 restoration. Martin Zanzucchi, a Flagstaff, Ariz., restaurateur instrumental in getting his city’s Santa Fe Street renamed Route 66, hopes the bill will do the same there.

“It means little towns like Flagstaff can apply for funding to repair parts of the old roads or to get some landscaping or park-like settings,” Zanzucchi said after Congress approved the bill July 28. Clinton signed it into law Aug. 12.