Generally, I appreciate all of the Route 66-related articles that Helium.com has posted in recent weeks.
However, there is one exception: the “Places to avoid while traveling on Route 66” by Eva Perry, which is loaded with inaccuracies or ill-conceived warnings.
I’ll summarize the problems that Perry sees on the Mother Road:
- A vaguely mentioned spot in Chicago near a quarry pit and Interstate 55 where the road “is not in great shape.”
- The Devil’s Elbow Bridge in Devil’s Elbow, Mo.
- Oatman, Ariz., because of its “wild mules.”
- Daggett, Calif., because of a section of Route 66 that “ends abruptly.”
- The Mojave Desert in California because the “road is not well-maintained.”
- “Glen Rio” (sic) in Texas, because it’s a ghost town.
- The “dirt road” Route 66 between Glenrio and San Jon, N.M.
- East St. Louis, Ill., because of its high crime rate.
I’ll tackle these in the order they’re listed:
- I’m not sure where this quarry is near I-55 in Chicago. An old section of Route 66 does lie in the suburb of McCook, Ill., that was damaged by alleged undermining by Vulcan Materials. But that’s been permanently closed to motorists for a decade. There’s no need to advise people to avoid it.
- The Devils Elbow Bridge indeed has deteriorated where its load restrictions prevent tour buses and large RVs from crossing it. However, the bridge remains open to those in passenger cars and motorcycles — the vast majority of Route 66 travelers.
- Those aren’t “wild mules” roaming the streets of Oatman. They’re semi-wild burros — descendants of the animals used in the town’s gold mines nearly a century ago. The burros can be pushy while begging for carrots (which Oatman businesses supply for a few bucks). But the burros generally stay docile and are hardly hazardous. About the worst thing that would likely happen is accidentally stepping in their, ahem, “road apples.”
- I’m not sure what section of road Perry is referring to in Daggett (again, she is very vague), except for maybe near a nearby military base. This dead end isn’t mentioned in the Route 66 turn-by-turn directions at Historic66.com. Even if this supposed dead end is unmarked (which I doubt), the small inconvenience of a turnaround is hardly a reason to bypass a town entirely.
- The road surface of Route 66 through the Mojave varies greatly in quality, but nowhere is it close to being worth avoiding. Even the most isolated stretches of the Mother Road remain nominally maintained because the road serves as a key link to Twentynine Palms, Amboy Crater, a Marines base, and other destinations.
- Avoiding Glenrio simply because it’s a ghost town was the item that made me shake my head the most. Most roadies would highly recommend seeing Glenrio because it shows what happened to many Route 66 towns when they were bypassed by the interstate. Glenrio once hosted more than a dozen roadside businesses and about 100 residents on a four-lane stretch of Route 66. Now, the eerily quiet Glenrio contains no businesses and maybe a half-dozen hardy souls. Here’s a testimony to the power of Glenrio’s story — John Lasseter cited it as a significant inspiration in the Disney-Pixar movie “Cars.”
- The “dirt” road between Glenrio and San Jon actually is a well-drained gravel surface. Sure, parts of the old road are pitted, and you seldom can drive over 35 mph on it. But its splendid desolation allows you a rare glimpse of how the Mother Road might have been in its earliest days, and provides a chance to see all sorts of wildlife. I rarely miss the chance to travel on this stretch.
- Of all of Perry’s misgivings, the advice to avoid East St. Louis might be the most prudent. East St. Louis indeed remains one of the highest-crime-rate areas on the Mother Road, and its street layout makes it easy to get lost. Even so, I lived near East St. Louis for eight years and traveled in it dozens of times. If you restrict your explorations to the daytime and stay aware of your surroundings, your time in East St. Louis should be uneventful.
Giving advice about Route 66 should be a public service. But, in this case, this Helium article turned into a public disservice.
Hi Ron. I’ve traveled the road in its entirety many times, and I’ve got to say, I can’t agree with you more. Keeping to East St. Louis during the day is wise, and simply a protective measure against crime, but I’ve also traveled there at night without difficulty. As for the other locations she mentions, to avoid these places would be, in my opinion, akin to preventing a person from fully grasping the full experience of the road. Glenrio, Mojave, and Oatman are three locations that I’d actually qualify as MUST-SEES. I tell people at my shop on a daily basis that if they’ve missed Oatman, they’ve missed what for many people is their favorite town on 66, period. The isolation and quiet of Mojave is so fantastic that in an era so polluted with distractions and ringing cell phones, that it just might be one of the few places left of pure peace and quiet. I love it. And Glenrio needs no explanation…if you’ve seen it, you know. These are phenomenal spots on 66, and should simply not be missed. What it really comes down to is despite how many of us love the Mother Road, the truth is that Route 66 isn’t for everybody. I don’t know Eva Perry, but it might be the case that she is simply not of the ilk to enjoy the road the way true roadies do. There’s nothing wrong with that, really. For the rest of us, however, the spots mentioned in the article read almost like a list of placed not to be missed.
Hello Ron. I am an amateur photographer and have traveled Illinois Route 66 many times over the years. On each trip I try to fill in the gaps with the numerous icons and attractions that still remain along the Mother Road. I recently found the Oasis Drive-In and barely caught the Riviera Roadhouse before it burned to the ground, but missed out on the Spindle and the Wishing Well Motel. Once these beauties are gone, they’ll never come back. I suggest people get out there and experience Route 66 before it’s gone. Here is my story regarding East St. Louis:
My wife and I embarked on a west-east trip on Route 66 from East St. Louis to Chicago in July of 2008. Coming from the northwest suburbs, we drove down Interstate 55 to St. Louis, photographed the Arch and started our journey back. It was a bit difficult finding the first stop on our journey; the Chain of Rocks Bridge. Granite City and the surrounding areas are run down and dangerous. When we arrived at the bridge, the parking lot seemed safe enough; there were children playing with their parents, people riding bikes and even an elderly couple walking hand in hand. I scoped out the area and didn’t see anything that seemed out of place, so we decided to lock all our belongings in the trunk of our car and walk the bridge to St. Louis. Not five minutes into our walk we heard car alarms in the distance. My wife told me one of the alarms was ours, as she had set it off accidentally a few days earlier at the grocery store and knew the sound. When we got to our car we found the passenger’s front window broken out, the inside of the car ransacked and the remote trunk button hogged out by a screwdriver. Luckily, they couldn’t get our trunk open or we’d have lost everything. The other car wasn’t so lucky. They were an older couple from Kansas who shared the same love of Route 66, and were driving it home from Indiana. Their SUV didn’t have a trunk, so they lost everything.
The Madison County Sheriff’s Deputy said our belongings would most likely never be found, as the thieves would usually steal a car in St. Louis, drive it to Illinois and rob a few vehicles via the “smash and grab”, then ditch it somewhere. Apparently there is a grass-roots effort to employ a parking lot “watchman”, but those efforts have been unsuccessful. The $5-10 he would have charged would have been worth every penny.
I never did get to see the bridge, and I’m going to be alot smarter the next time I visit East St. Louis. I am now a registered gun owner, and will not be driving my car or carrying anything valuable to the bridge.
OK … you do realize that you’re talking about either Madison, Ill., or St. Louis, Mo., correct? The Old Chain of Rocks Bridge is miles from East St. Louis. It’s not even in the same county as East St. Louis. It’s not exactly relevant to the Helium article.
And the problems with burglaries at the bridge have been well-documented here. What you’ve reported is, alas, nothing new.
To call my comments “not relevant” to the Helium article is absurd. In case you didn’t know (and obviously you don’t), it’s not all sunshine and flowers out there on the Mother Road, and people at least deserve to know about the ‘darker side’ of Route 66.
Your suggestion about Route 66 travelers “limiting their travels to the daylight hours” in the East St. Louis AREA (which includes the Chain of Rocks bridge, by the way) is exactly the kind of misinformation people DON’T need. My experience there was a fine example of what you deemed safe — blue skies, middle of a summer day, according to you we should have felt perfectly at ease, right? WRONG, Ron. We were victimized, and we weren’t the only ones. People need to know this information from individuals who have experienced it first hand, which is why I value articles like Eva Perry’s.
Ron, I have traveled the old highway from Tucumcari, NM to Chicago, and have traversed Illinois Route 66 over eight times. There are beautiful areas and dangerous ones. My suggestion to you is actually get out there and experience Route 66 instead of just writing about it.
I called you out for describing the area you mentioned as East St. Louis, which it most definitely is not. I stand by my comment.
There’ve been plenty of stories on this website about problems at the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge. I advise that you peruse them before accusing me of glossing over the situation.
FYI, I lived near East St. Louis for eight years and driven through it dozens of times, so I speak from firsthand experience, not theory.
And I’ve driven the entirety of Route 66 several times, as my “About Me” page makes abundantly clear.
The article by Ms. Perry is thankfully brief and dismissible. How can anyone “avoid” Oatman for any reason other than that it’s sort of “out of the way” if you’re really trying to travel cross-country? The article seems to be designed for people who are in a hurry and don’t want to waste time stopping in towns that don’t have a McDonald’s . . .
On the one hand, at least they wrote about Route 66, which is usually a good thing regardless? On the other, they obviously just didn’t get it! As Dan said, not everyone does, and that’s just sad, even more so for them…