Design

The Forgotten Remnants of Route 66

Photographer Edward Keating captures the history of Route 66 over the decades as towns along "the mother road" have fallen into disrepair and obscurity.
Tulsa, Oklahoma, 2000Photographs © Ed Keating/Contact Press Images from the book “Main Street: The Lost Dream of Route 66” (Damiani, 2018)

Route 66 has been forgotten. The once-vital artery connecting Chicago and Los Angeles—and hundreds of towns in between—was America’s Main Street. John Steinbeck famously dubbed it “the Mother Road.”

Passing through and bringing life to towns and cities across the heartland, Route 66 captured the imagination, delivering tourists, families, and misbegotten souls from one end of the country to the other.