photo #2186291

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1939 novel “The Grapes of Wrath,” about Dust Bowl migrants of the 1930s, Steinbeck devoted a chapter to Route 66, which he dubbed “the mother road,” a nickname that stuck. Like the bestselling book’s displaced farm family, thousands of real-life Americans fled drought and poverty in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri and neighboring states during the Great Depression and traveled west along Route 66 in search of employment.Part of I-40 overlays or parallels Route 66 today. Did you know that from 1963 to 1966, the US government considered a plan, part of Project Plowshare, to use atomic bombs to excavate a path for I-40 through California? The project was canceled largely due to the cost of developing the explosives and due to the unavailability of a "clean bomb".Contrary to myth, Steinbeck never ventured from Oklahoma to California with migrants as part of his research for “The Grapes of Wrath,” although the author did drive west on Route 66 with his wife in 1937.Traveling on Route 66 was an adventure. Instead of endless miles of today's interstate highways, there were surprises around every curve. Segments of the route still exist here and there and reminders still exist but most are gone with the wind.