It was the way out. Invented on the cusp of the depression, Route 66 was the road out of the mines, off the farm, away from troubled Main Street. It was the road to opportunity. Between 1926 and 1956, many people from the southern and plains states trekked west to California on Route 66, the Mother Road. Some never reached California. Instead, they settled along the road, building restaurants, tourist attractions, gas stations, and motels. The architecture of each structure reflected regional building traditions and the difficulties of the times. The designs of buildings and signs served as invitations for passing travelers to stop, fill their tanks, have a bite, and stay the night. Along Route 66 describes the architectural styles found along the highway from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California, and pairs photos with stories of the buildings and of the people who built them, lived in them, and made a living from them. With striking black-and-white images and unforgettable oral histories of this rapidly disappearing architecture, Quinta Scott has docomented the culture of America’s most famous road.

This guide to road-tripping along Route 66 presents the highway's very best stops--and it's the only guidebook with a fully integrated app.

In this engaging biography of a remarkable man, Susan Croce Kelly begins by describing the urgency for “good roads” that gripped the nation in the early twentieth century as cars multiplied and mud deepened. Avery was one of a small cadre of men and women whose passion carried the Good Roads movement from boosterism to political influence to concrete-on-the-ground. While most stopped there, Avery went on to assure that one road—U.S. Highway 66—became a fixture in the imagination of America and the world.

Tells the story of the legendary road, Route 66, begun in the early 1920s that covered 2400 miles from Chicago to Los Angeles.

By the time Route 66 received its official numerical designation in 1926, picture postcards had become popular travel souvenirs. At the time, these postcards with colorful images served as advertisements for roadside businesses. While cherished by collectors, these postcard depictions do not always reflect reality. They often present instead a view enhanced for promotional purposes. Portrait of Route 66 lets us see for the first time the actual photographs from which the postcards were made, and in describing how the production process worked, introduces us to an extraordinary archival collection, adding new history to this iconic road. The Curt Teich Postcard Archives, held at the Lake County Discovery Museum in Wauconda, Illinois, contains one of the nation’s largest collections of Route 66 images, including thousands of job files for postcards produced by Curt Teich and Company of Chicago. T. Lindsay Baker combed these files to choose the best examples of postcards and their accompanying photographs not only to reflect well-known sites along the route but also to demonstrate the relationships between photographs and their resulting postcards. The photographs show the reality of the locations that customers sometimes wanted "improved" for aesthetic purposes in creating the postcards. Such alterations included removing utility poles or automobile traffic and rendering overcast skies partly cloudy. This book will interest historians of art and design as well as the worldwide audiences of Route 66 aficionados and postcard collectors. For its mining of an invaluable and little-known photographic archive and depiction of high-quality photographs that have not been seen before, Portrait of Route 66 will be irresistible to all who are interested in American history and culture.

"In the early twentieth century, Tulsa was the "Oil Capital of the World." The rush of roughnecks and oil barons built a culinary foundation that not only provided traditional food and diner fare but also inspired upper-class experiences and international cuisine. Tulsans could reserve a candlelit dinner at the Louisiane or cruise along the Restless Ribbon with a pit stop at Pennington s. Generations of regulars depended on family-owned establishments such as Villa Venice, The Golden Drumstick and St. Michael's Alley. Join author Rhys Martin on a gastronomic journey through time, from the Great Depression to the days of "Liquor by the Wink" and the Oil Bust of the 1980s."--Back cover.