Time-Traveling Along Route 66, in Cars of the Past, Present and Future
Before cars could drive themselves, the Mother Road beckoned Americans westward. We drove a long stretch of it to assess the health of the old road while sizing up the next automotive century.
- May 23, 2026
U.S. Route 66, the Mother Road of novels, songs and movies and the highway that ran parallel with America’s postwar boom years, is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Driving it in 2026, you wouldn’t necessarily know that festivities were in order.
The arrival of jet travel and the birth of the federal interstate program in 1956 led to a marked decline in traffic, followed by decades of neglect. Though it has long since lost its former luster, Route 66 remains a monument to its past and to the freedom and opportunity it once stood for in a nation migrating westward.
Today, Route 66 is a dusty museum that wends its way lazily through eight states, from Chicago to Santa Monica, Calif. Along the way is a gallery of idiosyncratic Americana highlighting the nation’s first motorized century.
Though completists might wish to traverse every one of its 2,448 miles, I set out for four days and three nights to explore part of it with some fellow road-tripping history buffs: David Brancaccio, a former host and now a correspondent for “Marketplace” on public radio, and John Krafcik, a former chief of Hyundai North America and of Waymo, the robotaxi venture.
The tarmac trail on which Dust Bowl farmers and hundreds of thousands of others emigrated to California from points East serves now as a captivating trip through time.
We started from the road’s western terminus at the Santa Monica Pier, aiming for Albuquerque. For our nearly 900-mile journey east, we chose four vehicles, each representing a moment in automotive history.
Our larger mission was clear: assessing the health of the old road while comparing the technologies that have powered our mobile society for over 100 years.
Day 1
We kicked things off in a Waymo, an autonomous electric Jaguar I-Pace. This is the future, we are told, and we don’t doubt it.
Our first destination is close, Mr. Krafcik’s home, to swap rides and venture back into the past, picking up his mint-green 1966 Oldsmobile 4-4-2, a two-door muscle car with a full-throated V8. This long, handsome coupe was considered midsize in its day.
Next up is a bold step into the future with Mr. Brancaccio’s hybrid 2017 Chevrolet Volt, an early EREV (extended range electric vehicle), which uses a “stationary” gas engine to charge its batteries, rather than to power the driven front wheels. Though the Volt has sadly gone out of production, its technology is lately being revisited.
Finally, for the bulk of our driving, was Mr. Krafcik’s all-electric Rivian R1S sport utility vehicle.
A New World miracle in its heyday, Route 66 is undoubtedly older and sadder, but possibly wiser; a crossroad of history, where intense isolation was (and remains) tempered by a slow but steady influx of strangers passing through.
Day 2
We rise early, emerging from the Wigwam Motel in San Bernardino, where each room is its own concrete tepee. Erected in 1949, it reminds us that gaudy nostalgia has been drawing people to the highway for decades.
After charging the Rivian at a nearby station, we stop for a good breakfast at Peggy Sue’s ’50s Diner in Yermo. Built along the roadside in 1954, it fell on hard times only to reopen in 1987 as a ’50s-themed restaurant.
Filled today with its owner’s collection of memorabilia from old television programs and films, the place exudes a double layer of nostalgia — for the highway’s buoyant days (which no one can remember) and the public’s fascination with the 1950s.
Onward. In Newberry Springs, deep in the Mojave Desert, sits the Sidewinder Cafe, which Matt Parker bought in 2023. Some will know it as the setting for the 1987 film “Bagdad Cafe.”
The contemporary pastime of E.V. charging added to the discordant list of modern things we might do while puttering along an old-school two-lane highway and speeding along the divided four-lane Interstate 40, which replaces this hallowed road for numerous stretches. The Rivian will need a charge roughly every 270 miles.
It is no surprise that the interstate, with its busier traffic, is more flush with charge points. Rivian’s branded charging network — the Rivian Adventure Network, which numbers among its sites over 21,000 Tesla Superchargers that can be used with an adapter — proved refreshingly usable.
We also found ourselves impressed by the new charging stations set up by Ionna, a joint venture among numerous automakers.
We arrive in Amboy, Calif., and Roy’s Motel and Café — built in the 1940s as a garage to fix travelers’ cars at a spot where its founder, Roy Crowl, once broke down. It’s a historic site on the National Trails Highway of U.S. Route 66, but the motel is not open, though it may return, said Nicole Rachel, who was working behind the counter the day we passed by and was happy to chat.
Ms. Rachel, who once lived on Route 66 in Missouri, said Amboy was the “coolest part of Route 66, and not because I work here.” She added: “I think that we’re finally on the upswing. It’s finally gotten to the point. Generationally, things come back. Like bell bottoms come back every decade.”
Day 3
After a long trip to Williams, Ariz., we awaken early at the Historic Grand Canyon Hotel. Opened in 1891 and billed as “Arizona’s Oldest Hotel,” it feels old but boutique-y, though it is nowhere near the famous canyon.
Vicki Conklin, working the front desk, explained that the quaint, vaguely upscale town of Williams, with little of the hardscrabble feel we’d grown accustomed to, plays host to a railroad that takes travelers on a roughly two-hour ride up to the canyon in vintage rail cars pulled by steam locomotives. Once again, tourism and nostalgia play a big role helping support what appears to be a more prosperous community than most we’d see.
“Europeans, especially, they’re so interested in the West, it is amazing,” Ms. Conklin said. “Some travel all the way to Santa Monica from Chicago, all the way. They’re so interested. And then the Grand Canyon just is awe-inspiring. The American tourists love it just as much.”
Route 66 was decommissioned as a federal highway in 1985, its care and maintenance devolving to underfunded state governments, municipalities and merchants. In 1990, proclaiming that Route 66 had “become a symbol of the American people’s heritage of travel and their legacy of seeking a better life,” Congress enacted the
Route 66 Study Act. Nine years later it created the Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program.
By 2018, however, the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed the road on a list of 11 endangered sites most at risk of extinction. In 2024, Congress designated the road a National Historic Trail, charging the National Park Service with its preservation.
During our last night — in Gallup, N.M., at the El Rancho Hotel — we get our final blast of nostalgia as the lodging celebrates its Hollywood ties. Among the many films shot or set nearby: “The Grapes of Wrath,” from the John Steinbeck novel that first identified the highway as the Mother Road, along with “Touch of Evil,” “Easy Rider,” “Natural Born Killers,” “Little Miss Sunshine” and “Cars.”
Exciting us even more was a carnitas dinner at Jerry’s Café, a bit off the highway in downtown Gallup, surely the road trip’s best meal.
Day 4
We head out early for Albuquerque, to the Ancora Cafe. After breakfast burritos, Mr. Brancaccio and I spoke with Daniel Sullivan, who moved from Illinois and volunteers at the cafe, which provides job training to people in recovery and others.
Mr. Sullivan, who also coaches a football team for at-risk youths, has strong feelings about the road we’ve spent the last few days traveling, as it was the route he took to escape an alcoholic parent back in the Midwest.
“I think if more of today’s generation knew about Route 66 and the culture of how it got built before the I-40, seeing that small-town culture, seeing all those businesses that were booming at one time, the unique architecture — which are basically just abandoned buildings now — if we could bring them back to life, bring that culture and happiness back, that will bring more tourists here,” he said. He ticked off states along the route: “Oklahoma, Missouri, into Texas, that’s a beautiful sight,” he added, “a beautiful drive.”
