Over the weekend, the Chicago Tribune announced it is sending two reporters on Route 66 from west to east before the highway’s centennial in 2026.
In an initial story titled “One Century, One Road,” Jonathan Bullington and E. Jason Wambsgans said they will depart from the West Coast and head east on the Mother Road.
Ahead of next year’s anniversary, the Chicago Tribune will set out across Route 66 to introduce readers to the people and places it was designed to connect — the entertaining characters and roadside oddities, the business owners trying to revitalize their pieces of history and the voices that had been previously obscured in the roadway’s lore.
In pursuit of the unknown, we’re starting our journey at the farthest point from home, in Santa Monica, and working our way back to Chicago.
Along the way, we’ll explore whether the highway still has the power to unite a deeply divided country and learn what it has to tell us about the current state of our nation.
No dates were given for the journey.
The story also contains an online form at the bottom where it asks readers their favorite stops on Route 66, what Route 66 means to them, their name and email. Responses may be published in a future story.
I suspect this will be the first of many stories by major media outlets leading up to and during the highway’s centennial in 2026. The same sort of blanket saturation occurred when the highway was decertified in the mid-1980s.
(Image of a Route shield on the road in Oatman, Arizona, by Vicente Villamon via Flickr)