Your road trip of a lifetime.
Start beside the Pacific. Follow the old road through desert towns, neon nights, the Ozarks and the Midwest. Take your time—and let the places between the famous signs become part of the story.
Begin the 18-day journey →Explore the route & maps →Route 66 is a collection of surviving roads, communities and stories—not one continuous modern highway. This guide helps you turn that complexity into an enjoyable trip, with overnight stages, places to linger and a clear distinction between historical alignments and today’s connections.
Eastbound state sequence. This diagram shows order, not distance or a navigable road alignment.
From Santa Monica, allow roughly 160–190 miles and 4–6 hours of driving for a selected historic-road journey through the Los Angeles area to Barstow, before sightseeing. Traffic and alignment choices can change that substantially. Start rested, choose only a few stops, and leave the long desert stage for the following morning.
Read day one: Santa Monica to Barstow →
The Pacific, city boulevards and the Mojave.
Mountain bends, wide horizons and towns that kept the road alive.
Neon evenings and more than one version of the road.
Big skies and small buildings with strong personalities.
The road as a living main street.
A short stretch worth taking slowly.
Ozark roads, mural towns and the Mississippi.
Small-town stops and a Chicago finish.
Migration, work, discrimination, family holidays and the struggle to keep small businesses alive all belong to Route 66. Our illustrated history puts archival photographs beside the road’s later visual culture, with dates and sources so that a vintage image is never mistaken for today’s conditions.
Explore the illustrated history →
.jpg){kind=link}