Route 66 produced its share of daredevils and showmen, but the figure that haunts the early stretch of the road’s mythology most powerfully isn’t a driver at all. He was a flyer.
Lincoln Beachey was the most famous stunt pilot in America in the years just before World War One. He flew his biplane upside down over county fairgrounds from Illinois to California at a time when nobody else had figured out how to do it without dying. He looped, rolled, and dove to within feet of the ground, pulling up at the last moment with an exactness that left audiences unable to breathe.
He was performing at fairs and expositions in almost exactly the corridor that Route 66 would be built through a decade later. The crowds who came to see him were the same populations that would eventually drive the highway. He was selling them the same thing the road would eventually sell: the pure sensation of speed and risk in an open landscape.
Beachey died in 1915, crashing his monoplane into San Francisco Bay during an exhibition. He was twenty-eight years old. More than 50,000 people watched it happen.
His story is part of Route 66’s prehistory — the appetite for spectacle, the willingness to watch someone risk everything, the relationship between the American crowd and the figure at the front edge of danger. The road continued what Beachey started. It just moved the audience out of the stands and into the car, and made them participants in the sensation instead of spectators.
Every mile of Route 66 has always been a little bit of a dare.
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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