By the 1980s, Route 66 was dying quietly. Decommissioned, bypassed, falling off the maps — and then a journalist from Tulsa gave it back its story.
In 1990, Michael Wallis published Route 66: The Mother Road, a book he called a love letter to the highway. He had spent years driving it and talking to the people who had built their lives along it — the motel keepers, the café owners, the sign painters — and he set their stories down before they vanished. The book is widely credited with sparking the revival of interest that turned a decommissioned highway into a global pilgrimage.
Wallis became the road’s foremost champion and its most recognizable voice — quite literally. When a team of filmmakers set out to make an animated movie about a forgotten Route 66 town, they turned to him as their guide, driving the length of the road with Wallis narrating its history. He ended up lending his voice to a character in the finished film, and the fictional town at its heart was stitched together from the real Route 66 places he had spent his life documenting.
It is a neat piece of symmetry: the man who wrote the road back into the national imagination also became one of the voices keeping it there.
Some people travel a road. A few give it back its voice.
We are offering licences for ROUTE 66® Beer in specific territories. An invitation to others to become part of this story. To carry a piece of the road with them and to contribute to the story. We will share a percentage of royalties with Route 66 associations to keep the story alive.
The journey continues. This story is brought to you by ROUTE 66® BEER. Find us at ROUTE66BEER.COM
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