Route 66-Joplin, Missouri TB

Please drop this item in rural OR Premium Member Only caches.  Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event.  Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean, protects the number and prevents tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take the travel bug anywhere you wish.  No permission is needed to leave the U.S.

Travel bug photos are appreciated and will be re-posted here.

Each of the travel bugs in this series is named for a town through which the original Route 66 passed.

U.S. Route 66 was one of the original U.S. highways, established in 1926.  However, road signs did not go up until the following year.  The famous highway originally ran from Chicago, Illinois, through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, before ending at Los Angeles, covering a total of 2,448 miles.  It was recognized in popular culture by both a hit song and the Route 66 television show in the 1960s.  In the minds of the Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas public it also had an association with Phillips 66 gasoline.  That company began in 1917 as Phillips Petroleum of Bartlesville, Oklahoma.  In 1927, the company's gasoline was being tested on U.S. Highway 66 in Oklahoma, and when it turned out that the car was going 66 mph, the company decided to name the new fuel Phillips 66. 

Route 66 was a major path of the migrants who went west, especially during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and supported the economies of the communities through which the road passed. People doing business along the route became prosperous due to the growing popularity of the highway, and those same people later fought to keep the highway alive even with the growing threat of being bypassed by the new Interstate Highway System.  The highway was officially decommissioned in 1985 after it was decided the route was no longer relevant.  Most of the former had been diverted to the Interstate Highway System.  Portions of the road that passed through Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico, and Arizona have been designated a National Scenic Byway of the name "Historic Route 66".  It has begun to return to maps in this form. Some portions of the road in southern California have been redesignated "State Route 66", and others bear "Historic Route 66" signs and relevant historic information.