Postcards a Scenic Link to Route 66

John Noordberg has traveled Route 66 twice, and those trips left an indelible mark on his psyche, turning him into an avid collector of old, often wrinkled and written-upon postcards that provide pictorial reminders of a different time and much-changed places.

It was once a fairly lonely hobby, but as the 75th anniversary of the famous--albeit vanishing--highway nears, postcards from the motels, diners, towns and tourist attractions that once lined Route 66 are being snapped up by collectors and students of Americana.

The cards are photographic fossils of a prime period in America’s automotive age, when cars roamed the land and a buck would get you not only six gallons of gas but also an attendant who would clean your windshield and check the oil and coolant levels and the tire pressure.

Noordberg, a Fresno car buff, explains the mystique:

“Route 66 cards are a record of history. People would often draw an arrow on the card and write, ‘I stayed here.’ You spot things--changes over time,” says the retired accountant, who estimates his collection at 700 cards.

Unlike many collectors, who prefer uncirculated cards in new or near-new condition, Noordberg says he prefers used cards “because they’re personal.”

He says his first exposure to Route 66 occurred in 1959 on a trip to California from Manhattan.

He hit the highway again in 1998, when he bought a 1947 Buick Roadmaster in Iowa and drove it home to Fresno along as much of Route 66 as he could. The changes he noted helped spur his interest in postcard collecting.

“It’s interesting to see photos of the same location taken in different eras,” Noordberg says. The road over Cajon Pass, just outside San Bernardino, now is an eight-lane freeway. But in the 1930s, he says, “it was just two lanes of asphalt.”

The collector has eight postcards showing the pass in various stages.

Hundreds of travel-related businesses sprouted along the route’s 2,448 miles from Lake Michigan to the Pacific Ocean as Americans took to the road in search of a better life. But the national highway program, begun by President Eisenhower in 1954, doomed many of them, and the towns in which they grew up, as interstates were built and Route 66 was bypassed, Noordberg says.

“A lot of the motels aren’t there any longer. Coral Court in St. Louis was a most popular place to stay, and it’s been demolished,” he says of the frequent postcard subject.

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Originally, the postcards were given away at motels and sold in coffee shops, corner stores and pharmacies along the route. They served as advertising propaganda, and tens of thousands were in circulation. People picked them up as souvenirs instead of taking their own photographs.

Noordberg says he typically pays 50 cents to $2 for a card, but he has gone as high as $25 for a rare find.

Cards from Kansas are particularly dear, as there were only 12 miles of Route 66 cutting across the southeast corner of the state, and not many businesses to issue cards.

Some of his favorites are of the pre-Route 66 main streets and roads that were incorporated into the Chicago-to-L.A. highway when it was created in 1926.

In a pre-1919 card that shows Railroad Avenue in Gallup, N.M., Model A Fords are visible.

Noordberg collects three types of Route 66 picture postcards: “linens,” which are made of paper with a heavy linen content and were often used by motels; “chromes,” which are colorful snapshots of a business or local scenery and are printed on shiny paper; and “street scenes,” which present simple shots of busy thoroughfares.

He obtains his cards by haunting swap meets and antique shops, by word-of-mouth and, like other modern-day collectors, by plumbing the Internet--although, he complains, asking prices online tend to be high. He says he welcomes questions about Route 66 cards and can be reached by e-mail at noordberg@earthlink.net.

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Jeff Yip is a Silicon Valley-based journalist who covers automotive and technology issues. He can be reached at jeff@cyberspeed.com.