Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines. America's most legendary highway may have been officially decommissioned decades ago, but Route 66 is about to become the comeback trail. Acknowledging that the ribbon of asphalt stretching from Chicago through the heartland to Los Angeles was more than just a well-traveled thoroughfare, Congress last month agreed to spend $10 million for new signposts as well as matching grants to help preserve what remains of hundreds of distinctive buildings that once beckoned gaudily from the side of the road.

For generations, this highway was seen as America's Main Street, or the Mother Road, as author John Steinbeck tagged it in his Depression-era novel The Grapes of Wrath. It remains, even today, a 2,000-plus-mile reminder of less hurried times, of drive-in burger joints and Indian trading posts, of seedy snake farms and motels bathed in the soft light of neon. "Route 66 is people trying to sell you a tank of gasoline, a plate of enchiladas, a room for the night, a handful of postcards," says Michael Wallis, 53, author of Route 66: The Mother Road, whose romance with the road dates from when he learned to drive on it in St. Louis. "It's an illusion and a dream."

Perhaps, but at its official starting point—the intersection of Michigan and Jackson in downtown Chicago—it feels more like a big city traffic jam. Not until some 60 miles south, in Wilmington, Ill. (pop. 4,743), does Route 66 start to look like the American legend it is. There, cradling a rocket in his green arms, stands a 28-foot astronaut. "Everyone around here knows the Gemini Giant," says Jerry Gatties, 58, referring to the towering fiberglass figure that his in-laws, John and Bernice Korelc, erected outside their Launching Pad Drive-in snack bar in 1965. Since then, pranksters have made off with the missile at least twice, but the meticulously maintained Giant has never ceased to be a topic of local and passing conversation. As Jerry's wife, Sharon, 55, says, "Along 66 people still talk to you. It's a little more personal here."

From there, the road rolls by the old Ariston Cafe in Litchfield, Ill., and Ted Drewes's vintage 1941 frozen custard stand in St. Louis before reaching Pacific, Mo., where thirsty travelers have been stopping at the Red Cedar Inn bar and restaurant since 1934. Farther west, the highway's history changes dramatically. It was there, in Oklahoma, that 66 became a vital escape route for farmers ruined by the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. "It was a highway of hope," says Congressman Wes Watkins of Oklahoma, cosponsor of the current Route 66 legislation, whose own family drove from Oklahoma to California and back three times in a desperate search for work. Indeed, even as the Depression ground on elsewhere, a steady stream of Oklahoma natives kept roadside ventures afloat.

But traffic slowed to a trickle when construction of the current Interstate system picked up in earnest back in the 1960s. In Miami, Okla., the Coleman Theater, a movie palace that is a gem of Spanish revival-style architecture, still stands, but 30 years ago it began a slow slide into decay that ended only when a team of volunteers began completely refurbishing it. Work isn't over yet, but already the 1929 structure is a showstopper, particularly for the many foreigners who travel the route. "They have buildings in Europe that are 2,000 years old, but here they are visiting one that's 70," says Bill Flannery, the theater's summer manager. "It's wonderful."

Preservationists are at work all along the highway. In McLean, Texas (pop. 849), all but a handful of the town's 6 motels, 10 restaurants and 16 gas stations are gone, although the Texas Route 66 Association managed to save a 1927 cottage-style Phillips 66 station, one of countless examples that used to dot the route. Money from Congress will help, but it's thanks to determined small business owners that tired travelers can still spend a quiet night in a tepee-shaped motel room in Holbrook, Ariz., or Rialto, Calif., before the old highway dead-ends at the Pacific near sprawling, smoggy Los Angeles. John Lewis, 51, calculates that he spent more than $100,000 to restore his family's Wigwam Motel in Holbrook. Today, it stands, postcard-perfect, at the side of the road, as if any day now George Maharis and Martin Milner, the handsome stars of TV's 1960s hit Route 66, might pull up in their red 1960 Corvette. "It's like this place belongs to the people," says says Lewis, "and we're just here to take care of it."

Patrick Rogers
Cindy Dampier and Michael Haederle on Route 66