LOS ANGELES, CA – When Scott Piotrowski moved from Cleveland to Los Angeles after college, he took Route 66 most of the way. Once he landed, he realized a great interest in the Mother Road and decided to write a book about it, concentrating on locals within Southern California.
“We're here at the Southwest Museum of the American Indian because it overlooks so many different alignments of Route 66,” says Scott Piotrowski. “There were three different paths that the road took right down here below us and we can see all of them from this great vantage point as well as seeing all of the Arroyo Seco from Pasadena to Downtown Los Angeles.”
For Piotrowski, Route 66 is more than the Main Street of America. It connects communities and symbolizes the car culture that created Southern California. Before Route 66 was established in 1926, Southern California was isolated by the Sierra Madre Mountains and the Mojave Desert.
“And right down here, we have Route 66 as Pasadena Avenue,” says Piotrowski from the top of the tower at the Southwest Museum.
Piotrowski speaks as much about the road’s history as its future.
“As Route 66 grew and car culture and Southern California grew,” says Piotroski. “Those two grew together to make Los Angeles into the vast metropolitan area that we see now and is largely the reason for the insane amount of traffic that we have on a regular basis.”
Now known as Historic Route 66, from west to east, the road travels from Santa Monica to Broadway Ave in Downtown, passed Pasadena all the way to San Bernardino. Numerous attractions such as the Southwest Museum of American Indian can be found along the route and can still be enjoyed today.
“And its part of a transportation corridor that has been here for well over a century, first along the Arroyo Seco, then followed by streetcars and even the first highway in the United States,” explains Christina Morris of the National Trust of Historic Preservation.
Memorialized in pop culture in songs and books, Route 66 is still in danger of being forgotten. Morris is working to preserve the road as much as possible by creating a petition to designate it as a National Historic Trail.
“It’s important that we establish a National Historic Trail for Route 66,” says Morris. “To have a way for them to be maintained and supported in perpetuity. Right now the program that currently helps provide assistance to those property owners is going to sunset and we need to have a new means of providing them with assistance for the long term.”
Time to hit the road and get your kicks.