"If you ever plan to motor west..."

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"Jack, take my way, it's the highway that's the best..."

So Chuck Berry advised us in his superb rhythm-and-blues cover of (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66, a celebration of America's, maybe even the world's, best-loved road, and a song which encapsulates so much of American culture that it might be looked upon as an unofficial national anthem.

Route 66 is already famous as the great east-west road, running right through the heart of America. As Berry sang, "It goes from St. Louis, Joplin, Missouri / Oklahoma City looks oh so pretty / You'll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico / Flagstaff, Arizona, don't forget Winona / Kingsman, Barstaw, San Bernadino..."

The 2000-mile road from Chicago to Los Angeles was officially designated Route 66 in 1926, as millions of Americans were experiencing motor travel for the first time, and it would soon work its way into the affections of countless cross-country travellers. It might have been Steinbeck who first recorded its nickname of the Mother Road when he penned The Grapes of Wrath, about an impoverished family from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl heading west to California in an overloaded Hudson pick-up in search of employment and a brighter future during the Great Depression.

By 1969, when this photograph was taken, Route 66 was more than just a quaint single-track road for the occasional travellers. America's love affair with the car had grown to such an extent that large towns like Albuquerque, New Mexico, the setting for this picture, had extended Route 66 to a full three lanes wide, and still it was teeming with traffic.

If you're wondering about the cars, the finned car nearest the camera is a 1957 Pontiac, and the gold wagon next to it is a 1965-68 Ford. Considering the Pontiac was only 12 years old at the time, it's fascinating to observe how drastically styling fashions changed between the production of the two cars. On the other side of the road, a 1966 Chevrolet cruises towards the camera, followed by one of the Volkswagen Beetles which were becoming popular with the small number of Americans who cared about fuel economy. Further back, we see an early Ford Mustang straight out of another Chuck Berry song ("I've got a 1966 cherry red Mustang Ford").

The wonderful, colourful photograph, by the way, is the work of Ernst Haas, a talented snapper whose work appeared in Life and Vogue, as well as at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Words: Zack Stiling; photograph: Ernst Haas
 

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