A 92nd-birthday party was held Monday in downtown Springfield, Missouri, from the spot in 1926 where area good-roads activists proposed No. 66 for a highway from Chicago to Los Angeles.
The event at the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Park Central East in Springfield marked the spot at the long-gone Colonial Hotel when a telegram was sent April 30, 1926, to Washington, D.C., accepting No. 66 for the highway. The telegram ended a bitter impasse between several states over where to place U.S. 60.
KOLR-TV filed the best report about the event:
However, designating a number was a relatively easy task.
“Then the real work began,” said Tom Peters, the Dean of Libraries at Missouri State University. “The US Highway 66 Association was formed and incorporated and Woodruff and Avery and a lot of people worked hard for years to build up businesses, to pave the road, to really make it the premier route to the west..”
KY3 in Springfield also filed this report:
Historians aren’t in agreement over U.S. 66’s birthday. Many choose Nov. 11, 1926. That’s when U.S. 66 officially became commissioned by the federal government.
Springfield in recent years has embraced its role in Route 66 history. It created more Route 66 landmarks in the city and has hosted the rapidly growing Birthplace of Route 66 Festival in downtown.
(Screen-capture image from video at the Route 66 birthday party Monday in Springfield, Missouri)
L@@king good 66 at 92 !
ILCAL
t0m/chicago
As I posted on another location today, wouldn’t celebrating Route 66’s birthday on the day the number was chosen be like celebrating your birthday when you’re parents decided on your name, or when you were conceived, as opposed to the day you were actually born?
Don’t knock it Scott. Some of us worked for over 20 years to get Springfield to recognize it’s significance to Route 66. The fact the City now wants to do something, anything, to commerate any date related to Route 66 is a milestone. Does LA do anything to commerate any date related to Route 66?