Apart from occasional college football teams, Oklahoma doesn’t often get to crow about being the best in the country, but as far as Route 66 is concerned, the state is definitely number one. Containing more still-driveable miles of the old highway than any other state, this is definitely mecca for old-roads fans.
Underneath the promotional hoopla that Route 66 generates everywhere it ever went, all over Oklahoma signs declare that barely a century ago this was Indian Territory, last refuge of Kiowa, Apache, Comanche, and other tribes before the U.S. government took even this land away from them during “land rushes” in the 1890s. A few years later, oil was discovered and the state started on one of a series of boom-and-bust cycles. The Dust Bowl exodus of the 1930s was the greatest downturn, as thousands of Oklahoman families headed west on Route 66. Many of the towns along the road take bittersweet pride in The Grapes of Wrath connections.
