The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Route 66 Postcard Road Trip has been selected as one of 11 finalists in the Humanities category for the 2024 ArcGIS StoryMaps competition.
The Route 66 Postcard Road Trip was selected from over 570 submissions from student and professional storytellers invited to “build stories about the world they want to see.” The competition drew submissions in at least 10 languages from 58 countries.
The public is invited to explore the finalists and vote for their favorite on the 2024 ArcGIS StoryMaps Competition “Community Choice” hub through March 12.
The National Trust’s submission to the StoryMaps competition explores the evolution of Route 66 through maps and place-based data. The National Trust for Historic Preservation launched the series through its Historic Route 66 GIS & Crowdsourcing Campaign, as part of its broader Preserve Route 66 initiative before the Route 66 centennial in 2026.
Made possible with support from David and Julia Uihlein, the campaign aimed to map historic places and stories along the Route 66 corridor within a single comprehensive geospatial resource.
To identify and map more than 2,000 historic sites along the route by its 100th anniversary in 2026, this project aims to inform and inspire preservation to save America’s Main Street as more elements of the iconic roadway are lost each year.
The Route 66 Postcard Road Trip is organized into three parts, beginning with a StoryMap that takes viewers on a virtual road trip across the 2,400+ miles of Route 66 with historic “stops” viewed through the lens of 12 vintage postcards from the Newberry Library’s James R. Powell Route 66 postcard collection.
Photographic views from the past are geolocated onto modern satellite imagery, along with short historical vignettes to reveal a story of change, survival, erasure and rebirth.
The second part of the Road Trip showcases the preliminary mapping of 1,000 postcards. (This spring, the National Trust plans to map and release the full digitized collection of over 3,000 postcards along Route 66.)
The third part encourages the public to submit images of iconic and memorable places along Route 66 as part of its national crowdsourcing campaign, Share Your Route 66 Story.
“Route 66 is a journey through America’s 20th century,” said Rhys Martin, manager of the National Trust’s Preserve Route 66 program and president of the Oklahoma Route 66 Association. “This mapping project ties the past to our present in a vibrant, interactive way. People from all over the world seek out Route 66 to experience America; the Postcard Road Trip StoryMap highlights how that experience continues to evolve. It will inspire tomorrow’s roadside explorers to spend time on The Mother Road as it approaches its Centennial in 2026.”
The National Trust will continue to produce the rest in a series of StoryMaps exploring Route 66 themes including electrification, economic development and community investment and legacy businesses.
(Screen-captured image of the Route 66 Postcard Map from the National Trust of Historic Preservation)