A cruise through Hooker Cut

Here’s something you don’t see on YouTube all that often — the 1940s Hooker Cut alignment of Route 66 near Devil’s Elbow, Mo.

The videographer says this four-lane alignment of Route 66 is “abandoned,” although that’s not true. It’s still used by local motorists, although it certainly isn’t seeing the traffic volume it saw 50 years ago.

Anyway, Hooker Cut was called that because highway workers gouged a deep cut into a mountain near Hooker, Mo., so they could lay a four-lane highway and bypass a dangerous two-lane alignment of Route 66. The Hooker Cut project was considered quite a highway engineering marvel at the time.

More about Hooker Cut and Devil’s Elbow can be found here.