Mark Muckenfuss of the Press-Enterprise has an interesting story about the history of the wagon and American Indian trails through the Mojave Desert and mountains that led to what became the Los Angeles metro area.
When Route 66 was commissioned in 1926, it closely followed the Santa Fe rails through the western cities that pop up in the classic song “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66.”
“It’s geography that did all this for us,” said Larry Burgess, a local historian and the director of Redlands’ Smiley Library. “Nature made it possible.”
What we’re seeing today, he said, is simply an amplification of a longstanding pattern.
“Nothing’s really new; it’s just bigger,” Burgess said.
In the space of 150 years, footpaths became freeways.