Route 66-Ontario, Texas TB

This trackable has the goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by at least 25 cachers. That is a rate of five drops per year for five years, or a drop every 73 days.  As of 19-Nov-20 it had survived for 1.4 years and had been moved by 7 cachers, for an average release every 71 days.

No permission is needed to leave the U.S.  While in the U.S., please drop it in a Premium Member only OR a rural cache near a busy trail or road. Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event where there is no security.  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 trackable anywhere you wish.

Trackable photos are appreciated, but do not show the tracking code. The photos will re-posted here.

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.

Each of the travel bugs in this series is named for a community through which a segment of Route 66 passed. I hasten to add that there is not a travel bug for each town because there are close to 300 places that could qualify. That number may seem high, but the track of the road varied over time.  Some towns had only brief stints as part of the highway whereas there are some for which Route 66 was always Main Street until the Route was retired. In addition to small deviations of the track, there were major ones that added a number of communities to the roster, notably a bypass in Missouri to avoid St. Louis and an alternate loop to include Santa Fe in New Mexico. Some of the localities are now ghost towns and others have become suburbs of metropolitan areas. Regardless of the current population of each, there is a high probability that a traveler on the old road will have the opportunity to purchase memorabilia like that attached to this travel bug Tag.