“… and they come in to 66 from the tributaries, side roads, from the wagon track, and the 66 is the mother road…”
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck’s Route 66 was a miserable place. A bare road of desperation, families fleeing the Dust Bowl poverty of Middle America for a shot at economic salvation in California. The 1930s turned the newborn (and largely unpaved) American highway into a torrent of clattering Chevy Internationals and Hudson Super Six sedans, top heavy with extended families and crates of supplies. Close to California, the route was congested with disabled farm trucks and slow moving caravans. The only roadside attractions were tin-roofed shantytowns and rare gas stations.

But by the 1950s, the crowds of forlorn hitchhikers were replaced by crowds of neon signs beckoning road-tripping vacationers into motor court motels and diners. Tent cities of migrant workers grew into classic American main streets, lined with drug stores and barbershops. Completely paved now, Route 66 was a shining star of the American Highway system. American drivers took notice, and fleets of Cadillac Eldorados and ‘57 Bel Airs flooded the road. The experience of cruising Route 66 in its prime was not unlike driving through the longest theme park in the world, with attractions equal parts natural wonder and man-made monstrosity. Grand Canyon, meet the giant fiberglass Muffler Man.

Even though modern Interstate highways had replaced most of the Route by the end of the 1960s, the road’s legacy was well guaranteed. Route 66 embodies the notion of the pleasure drive, every inch of it portraying what road trips used to mean to Americans: Slow driving, occasionally making good time, but making more time to stop at every natural cavern, friendly general store, or car hop diner with a respectable neon sign. The fragmented, tattered remnants of The Mother Road have become a kind of Mecca for Americans who long for that kind of road trip. If you’re one of them but don’t have time to painstakingly reconstruct the 2,400 miles from Chicago to the Pacific Ocean, point your wheels instead to Arizona.

The nearly 200-miles of original Route 66 that wends its way across Arizona is the most satisfying portion of the road left today. The highway here, running like an arrow from east to west across the top half of the state, paints a perfect picture of what the old Route was in its heyday - and what it has become in its obsolescence.

Indeed, finding traces of the original road from the New Mexico border east to Flagstaff is a frustrating endeavor. Most of the original pavement has been buried beneath the Interstate 40 alignment, leaving stunted segments that add up to only 50 miles of the original road. This is the predominant reality of Route 66 today – drive a little while on Interstate 40, watch for signs promoting “historic Route 66 sights, next exit,” then pull off the interstate and into towns like Holbrook, Arizona.

In Holbrook, weary motorists are still enticed with a neon sign for the “Wigwam Motel,” which asks: “Have you slept in a Wigwam lately?” If not, it’s entirely possible to bunk down in one of the 15 tee-pee shaped motel rooms operated by the same family since the 1950s. To really drive home the nostalgia, the owners have parked a half dozen Bel Airs, Cadillacs, and Hudsons around the parking lot.

That’s because the image of the vintage car, a flurry of fins and chrome, of picnicking families piled into a Ford Country Squire, is inseparable from the image of Route 66. Old cars become props at stops like the Wigwam Motel and down the road at Cruiser’s Cafe in Williams because they temporarily distract visitors from the jumble of contemporary shopping malls nearby. Old cars connect modern motorists with the rush of sentimentality they’re looking for, evidence that the mystique of Route 66 depends heavily on America’s love affair with classic automobiles. And as you’d expect, the illusion of time travel usually dissipates by dusk each day, when SUVs and hybrid sedans outnumber the token Hot Ones in the motor court and diner parking lots.

If this disjointed, stop-and-go reality of the current Route fails to satisfy, salvation lies just beyond I-40 Exit 139, in the tiny town of Ash Fork, Arizona. Here in Ash Fork begins the longest remaining continuous stretch of old Route 66. This segment is 144 miles of uninterrupted asphalt, rough and stubbly like an unshaven grandpa, miles that roll and wind through the tumbleweed plains and red rock canyons leading towards the California border. This is a road that converts Route 66 skeptics into believers.

The desert scenery alone is spectacular, making it easy to understand the once irresistible attraction to road-tripping families from the Midwest. And despite the rural isolation, original Route 66 diners, motels and curio shops thrive here because a steady stream of Americana aficionados still come from all over the world to drive these 144 miles. What they find today is not dramatically different than what drivers experienced 50 years ago – gorgeous views, clear lanes, and a healthy selection of functioning neon signs. Sights like the Grand Canyon Caverns, opened in the 1920s, still draw the attention of passing motorists. The boom and bust gold mining town of Oatman still offers classic ghost town flavor. And in Seligman, the town that spearheaded the national historic designation for Route 66, you can still pull up to the Snow-Cap Drive In diner and order a “Hamburger Without Ham.” If you’re lucky, you might even get to park next to a classic.