For a long time, Route 66 felt like a ghost.
The motels were empty.
The neon was dark.
The diners were boarded up.
The towns were quiet.
The interstate had done its job too well.
But something unexpected happened — something no planner, engineer, or policymaker could have predicted.
People came back.
Not because they needed to.
Because they wanted to.
In the 1980s and ’90s, travelers from all over the world began seeking out the old road. They came from Japan, Germany, Australia, France, the UK, Brazil — drawn by a mythic idea of America that still lived in the cracks of the pavement.
They weren’t looking for efficiency.
They were looking for authenticity.
They wanted:
the neon
the diners
the mom-and-pop motels
the wide-open spaces
the stories
the freedom
They wanted the America that Route 66 had promised.
And they found it — not on the interstates, but in the forgotten towns that had been bypassed decades earlier.
In 1946, songwriter Bobby Troup wrote a line that would outlive every mile marker:
“Get your kicks on Route 66.”
That phrase became a rallying cry.
It captured the spirit of the road — the joy, the adventure, the possibility.
It turned Route 66 into something bigger than a highway.
It turned it into a symbol.
Decades later, when the Mother Road was officially decommissioned and the neon went dark, that song was still playing — on jukeboxes, in tour buses, in languages Route 66 had never heard when the pavement was new.
Travelers who had never set foot in America knew the lyrics.
They knew the rhythm.
They knew the promise.
And many of them came to experience it for themselves.
It’s the same spirit behind Route 66 Kicks — a tribute to the road that gave the world permission to dream.
The revival didn’t come from Washington.
It didn’t come from corporations.
It didn’t come from a federal program.
It came from:
local historians
motel owners
neon restorers
car clubs
photographers
preservationists
families who refused to let their towns disappear
They formed Route 66 associations.
They restored signs.
They reopened diners.
They rebuilt motor courts.
They held festivals.
They told stories.
They welcomed travelers from every corner of the world.
They brought the road back to life.
One neon tube at a time.
One postcard at a time.
One memory at a time.
The revival was always two kinds of work.
On the ground — keep the signs lit, the doors open, the stories alive.
In the record — keep the photographs, maps, postcards, and memories from disappearing when a town changes hands or a sign comes down.
Car Culture has spent decades on that second job: original photography, film and stories about American roadside culture — motels, neon, diners, and the cars that traveled between them.
For the Route 66 centennial (May 2026 through May 2027), we are publishing Route 66 Kicks — this series, The Road We Forgot, and artwork drawn from our collection across all eight states from Illinois to California.
We are not rebuilding the road.
The people above already did that.
We are documenting it — installment by installment — so the Mother Road stays visible in the century that follows.
More from the collection will appear here as each piece is finished. For now, this chapter belongs to the volunteers, the motel keepers, and the travelers who refused to let Route 66 become a footnote.
If the revival taught us anything, it’s that the Mother Road survives when people show up.
♥️ Join the Route 66 Kicks list — the next installment and centennial updates.
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♥️ New here? Start with The Mother Road We Forgot (Installment I) and follow the series on Paragraph.
♥️ Visit route66kicks.com — centennial hub and eight-state map.
Get your kicks.
Published by Car Culture, Inc. under license from Automobilia II, LLC.
Route 66 Kicks · Centennial 2026–2027