About Route 66 and our ride
Route 66 History
U.S. Highway 66 — popularly known as Route 66 — embodies a complex, rich history that goes well beyond any chronicle of the road itself. An artery of transportation, an agent of social transformation, and a remnant of America’s past, it stretches 2,400 miles across two-thirds of the continent. The highway winds from the shores of Lake Michigan across the agricultural fields of Illinois, to the rolling hills of the Missouri Ozarks, through the mining towns of Kansas, across Oklahoma where the woodlands of the East meet the open plains of the West, to the open ranch lands of Texas, the enchanted mesa lands of New Mexico and Arizona, to the Mojave Desert, and finally to the “land of milk and honey” – the metropolis of Los Angeles and the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Flanked by historic buildings and diverse cultural resources, Route 66 slices across the continent, revealing the process of historical change that transformed the lives of people, their communities, and the nation. This fabled highway’s multiple alignments connect not only the East and the West, but also the past and the present.
About our journey
Although we are not starting our journey in Chicago, for safety and logistics reasons, we will have a hometown send off from a different location, near Milwaukee Wisconsin each year. We will ride from Milwaukee, to our official Route 66 starting point, in Joliet, Illinois and ending at the Santa Monica pier in Santa Monica, California.
Below is our route, located on RoadTrippers. Click the "66 For The 22 - 2024 Fundraiser" link, in the upper left corner, to view interactive map.
