EDITORIAL: America needs a Route 66 National Park

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Jun. 7—Route 66 deserves to be America's next national park.

Nothing else does justice to preserving what's left of the historic route or telling its story.

Nat King Cole sang about it. So did Bing Crosby and John Mayer and a host of others. The Rolling Stones' version still holds up as one of the best.

John Steinbeck wrote about it. Television shows were made about it. Movies too.

It was at the same time the "Mother Road" and "America's Main Street."

What other place could Americans get their kicks? Yet it also was our "path of a people in flight."

The highway tells the story of the westward expansion, the Great Depression and post-war optimism, and it reflects the nation's scenery and people at its most diverse.

It was a place as real as the Ribbon Road in Northeast Oklahoma, as well as a journey that took place in the nation's imagination.

"Those of us who want to preserve and protect Route 66 and tell the honest story, we believe there's an obligation, since it's arguably the most famous highway in the world," author and historian Michael Wallis recently said. "Route 66 basically was a road for everyone. It was a road for blue bloods or rednecks, everybody traveling."

"The world still comes to Route 66," said Wallis, who also serves on the Route 66 Centennial Commission, which is planning some of the national events around the anniversary. "It's because they can get a taste of this country before it became generic, before it was just littered with cookie-cutter franchise businesses, before it was homogenized. It's a road not so much for tourists as it is for travelers."

Enough of the original Route 66 survives that Congress should proclaim a Route 66 National Park before the centennial, in 2026 — a linear park to fit Wallis' characterization of Route 66 as a "linear village."

Each of the eight states through which it passes could tell a different part of the highway's story.

Communities and states along the route are already thinking big for the centennial, investing in efforts to protect and promote the road.

Congress needs to "get hip to this timely tip" and think big too.

Route 66 is a big story, a national story, deeply embedded in America's cultural heritage, and it deserves national park status to preserve and interpret it for future generations.