Route 66 Fun Run

Route 66 Fun Run Goes Thru
Golden Shores/Topock

"Get your kicks on Route 66," during the Route 66 Fun Run begins the first Friday in May in Seligman with the Miss Historic Route 66 Pagent, following thru to Kingman where there is a Show and Shine on Saturday as well as street dances and a vendor fair at Locomotive Park. A book signing with authors who have written books on Route 66 will take place at the Dream Machine, next to Locomotive Park. The event ends in Golden Shores on Sunday with an award ceremony and a farewell ceremony.
The "mother road," commissioned in 1926 and commissioned in 1985, traversed eight states and 2448 miles between Chicago and Santa Monica, California, crossing thru Tri-state area's Needles, California, Golden Shores, Oatman and Kingman, Arizona.
It inspired a 1960's television series about traveling the West and at least two songs by Nelson Riddle and Bobby Troupe.
The "get your kicks on Route 66" lyrics are Troupe's. The "mother road" label belongs to John Steinbeck and his 1930's Dust Bowl classic, "The Grapes of Wrath." Those displaces Oklahomans weren't the only ones to head West on U.S. 66. After World War II, it became the thing to do.
"America became more mobile than it had ever been," said Eric Szeman, co-owner of Albuquerque's Route 66 Malt Shop, who made the Route 66 trek himself with his parents in 1954. "The mass migration westward was pretty much handled by Route 66."
Szeman hopes Albuquerque will gain a hefty share of the $10 million earmarked by the federal government this for Toute 66 restoration, and he hopes to be part of the process.
Martin Aznzucchi, a Flagstaff restauranteur instrumental in getting Flagstaff's Santa Fe Street renamed Route 66, hopes the bill will do the same for his hometown.
"It means little towns like Flagstaff can apply for funding to repair parts of the old roads or to get some landscaping or park-like settings," Zanzucchi said after Congress approved the bill July 28, 1999.
Tourists still retrace the route. An Italian couple shipped their Motoguzzi motorcycle to Chicago to ride west in tandem, and a German couple arranged to pick up their new Harley-Davidsons in Los Angeles for their eastbound Route 66 trek, Szeman said.
Martin Milner, star of television's "Route 66," hit the road again for a video issued last year. "Route 66, Return to the Road With Martin Milner" takes viewers on a historical-cultural nostalgia trip in two volumes. The eastern leg takes viewers across Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahome. The western portion crosses Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
The New Mexico association web site, http://www.rt66nm.org, gets7000 hits a month, mostly from out of state and about 1/3 from outside the country.
"There's a kind of mythology, the best of American culture," Williams said. "And everyone wants to experience that - the authentic American spirit that really created this country.
"That road still is," he said. "It may not be called Route 66 anymore, but it still vibrates."
For more information about Route 66 Fun Run, call the Kingman Chamber of Commerce at (928) 753-6106.