Film, community, and the Mother Road

In 2026, Route 66 turns 100. In a way, it’s surprising that it’s only 100. The 2,448-mile-long US highway was already an American legend when Nat King Cole recorded the hit song Get Your Kicks on Route 66 in 1946. As the song says, “it winds from Chicago to LA,” going through the center of hundreds of communities in the heartland and southwest.

Steinbeck called it “the Mother Road,” and it was a primary route for Dust Bowl refugees heading west. It represents a short-lived era of American motoring that was slower-paced and deeply rooted in real places. That era ended with the Interstate Highway System, which bypassed Route 66, primarily with I-40, in the 1960s. In the 1980s, Route 66 was officially removed from the US highway system when the parallel Interstate sections were completed.

By the 1990s, the story of Route 66 was fading from memory when young filmmaker John Paget traveled the iconic highway in a Cadillac convertible to make two documentaries, Route 66, American Odyssey, and Route 66: Return to the Road. In the days before the Internet, Paget studied homemade maps and guidebooks to identify the old route, which sometimes twisted and turned in cities, because the signs had long been removed.

“The blight of freeway bypasses and placeless development” along Route 66 inspired Paget and his First+Main Films cofounder, Chris Elisara, to discover New Urbanism. They read early new urbanist texts, such as Suburban Nation and The Geography of Nowhere, to gain a better understanding of the changing urban patterns. That knowledge became the focus of their company.

After 30 years of filmmaking with cities and towns as the main characters, Paget is returning to the iconic highway to direct ROUTE 66: The Main Street of America. First+Main created a compelling trailer, and they have a Kickstarter funding page to complete and distribute the project, which is currently about thirty grand short of its goal. The plan is to release the film in a traveling road show along the route in the fall of 2026. “This landmark film will be more than just a celebration of Route 66. It will serve as a powerful rallying cry to save and preserve America’s most storied highway,” it says. 

Route 66 revival

Over the last three decades, the highway has undergone a revival, thanks to its historic designation and the wildly successful Pixar film Cars, which is based on the Route 66 story. “The consciousness of 66 is sky high in all of the towns,” Paget says. “There are more 66 shields now than it was when it was an official highway.” Businesses all along the route carry the Route 66 moniker. People come from all over the world to drive the highway, generating a thriving tourism economy along the way. And yet, these towns have also experienced the sprawl, road widenings, and downtown struggles that we see in communities across America.

In some cases, cities and towns have benefited from a revival of urbanism. Oklahoma City, which hosted CNU 30, has rejuvenated its downtown in the last decade based on a new urbanist walkability plan. “You can see both old urbanism and small towns along Route 66,” says Elisara. “And as you experience that, you also see how the ideas of those kinds of urbanism are applied to neighborhoods and districts all along the road.”

The towns along the route began as railroad towns before the highway was built. Every 10 miles, facilities serviced the trains. Then, in the highway heyday, cars needed frequent servicing and maintenance, so the spacing of the settlements served travelers well. The road purposefully went through the heart of every town, which offered lodging and refreshment. After World War II, sprawl began to appear, and then the Interstates changed everything. “It’s a weird inversion of the freeway story,” says Elisara. In cities, urban main streets were leveled. Along Route 66, “the main streets are here today because the freeway didn’t destroy them.” Because the freeway was built about a mile from Route 66, it didn’t wipe out the towns physically, but it bypassed their economies. 

Bad design choices

In some cases, it wasn’t the Interstate that did the most damage. Angel Delgadillo of Seligman, Arizona, a barber who has been dubbed the “guardian angel” of Route 66, said something surprising, Paget says. The decline of the highway preceded the Interstate, when it was still Route 66, “and the road was widened. Every business had a huge patio, sidewalks, and awnings, and all were ripped out when the road was widened. Some of it was damage caused by urban renewal, the changing street dimensions, and design choices such as covering handsome buildings with unattractive siding. They did not fully value what they had. New urbanists could help these towns recover assets.”

The old Route 66 traverses hundreds of rural-to-urban Transects, in and out of the heart of settlements. These towns often need the skills of new urbanists. Many towns have preserved, but underutilized, fabric that industrious individuals are rediscovering now. Many of the Route 66 heroes who helped achieve the historic designation are gone now, Paget says. “A generation is passing away, and there’s an opportunity for new folks to come and do stuff.”

The old Route 66 was lined with motor court hotels, many of which were torn down, but some still exist. The younger generation has discovered that these are cool, and they are undergoing incremental development. “There’s an opportunity for new generations to discover those towns and invest in them as entrepreneurs,” Paget says. 

The lyrics of the song name so many cities—Chicago, St. Louis, Joplin, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Gallup, Flagstaff, Winona, Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino. Albuquerque and Santa Fe, not to mention hundreds of smaller communities, are not mentioned—probably because they didn’t fit the rhythm and rhyme. Yet the romance of these places is what makes the song so popular.

Route 66 is the story of America. I look forward to seeing it come to theaters from Chicago to LA in 2026.