Mark Hamilton announced last week he now is taking preorders for the “Backroads Guide to Route 66 Food, Lodging and Foto-Stops,” which serves as a successor of the National Historic Route 66 Federation‘s defunct “Route 66 Dining and Lodging Guide.”
The link to preorder the book through PayPal is here. The cost will be $22.95, plus $5 flat shipping in the U.S.
There is a limit of one copy per mailing address. Those who contributed to a fundraiser will receive the guide first.
He said in an email the guide would be 240 pages with photographs and listings of “all mom and pop motels, diners, restaurants, RV parks/campgrounds, and some not-so-well-known places to check out along, or just off of the route.”
Hamilton stated the guide would be out in late December or early January. An Android app of the guide will be released in November.
Hamilton announced in May 2022 that he was reviving the “Route 66 Dining and Lodging Guide.”
The “Route 66 Dining and Lodging Guide” was updated every two years or so by federation volunteers who adopted 100-mile stretches of the highway and gathered data.
The 17th and last edition of the spiral-bound “Route 66 Dining and Lodging Guide” was published in 2015. It contained more than 200 pages of recommended restaurants and motels along Route 66. The guide began as a thin, pamphlet-sized publication that grew exponentially.
Federation Chairman David Knudson in 2018 announced the decision to stop updates on the guide during a brief post on the now-defunct Route 66 yahoogroup.
Back in the late 1990s and much of the 2000s, many motels and restaurants found the original guidebook to be a financial lifeline, especially during the early days of Route 66’s renaissance.
Knudson said sales of the guide dropped “noticeably” in recent years. He said the growing popularity of internet travel sites such as TripAdvisor.com, plus a lack of Adopt-A-Hundred volunteers, hampered the publication.
The federation continues to publish Jerry McClanahan’s “Route 66: EZ66 Guide for Travelers” book (Amazon link). The book has offered maps and detailed turn-by-turn directions to follow Route 66 eastbound and westbound since 2005.
The federation published “Guided 66 Tour” book (Amazon link) that’s designed to be used in conjunction with the “EZ66 Guide.”
(Image of the “Backroads Guide to Route 66 Food, Lodging and Foto-Stops” cover courtesy of the author)