The short answer
Route 66 is the most postcarded highway in America. Opened in 1926 and running more than 2,400 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica, it carried dust-bowl migrants west, vacationers to the desert, and a whole roadside culture of motels, diners, and neon — all of it photographed, illustrated, and mailed home on postcards. The road left the official highway system in 1985, but its postcards never stopped selling.
In the atlas, Route 66 is filed under the states it crosses — Illinois and Oklahoma each keep the road's card — and new vintage-style cards carry the Mother Road look forward.
A road built for postcards
Route 66 was laid out to connect small-town main streets rather than bypass them, which made it a continuous strip of Americana: gas stations with painted signs, motor courts with vacancy lights, diners with jukeboxes, and roadside giants built to make drivers stop. Every one of those stops was a postcard subject, and roadside postcard racks did a roaring trade through the highway's heyday.
Postcards captured the road's promise — a desert sunset at the end of a long day, a motel pool in the heat, a diner's neon at dusk. Collecting them is a way of collecting the road itself.
From 1926 to 1985 and back
Route 66 was commissioned in 1926 as one of the original numbered highways. Its fame grew through the Depression, when John Steinbeck's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath named it the Mother Road for the families who followed it west, and through the postwar years when it became the vacation highway to the Southwest and California. The interstates of the 1960s and 70s bypassed it town by town, and in 1985 the road was removed from the national highway system.
It did not disappear. The 1980s and 90s brought a revival — historic route markers went up, scenic byway segments were designated, and Route 66 became a destination in its own right. Its postcards, old and new, are part of that second life.
What collectors keep
Route 66 postcard collectors usually focus on the roadside: motels and motor courts, diners and drive-ins, gas stations and garages, neon signs, and the attractions — from the big things to the odd roadside giants. Because the road crossed eight states, many collectors build state-by-state sets, watching the landscape change from Illinois prairie to Oklahoma red earth to Arizona desert.
Vintage cards of famous stops carry real collector value; new vintage-style cards — like the ones in this atlas — let anyone keep the look of the road without hunting rarities. The value guide explains what makes a genuine old card worth collecting.
Route 66 in the atlas
The road has its own place pages where it is filed: Route 66 in Illinois, where the highway began in Chicago, and Route 66 in Oklahoma, where it crossed the red-earth country that gave the road some of its best-known scenery. Each page carries its card, and the surrounding routes — Illinois, Oklahoma, and the other states the road crossed — hold the towns and stops that made the drive famous.
A vintage-style card of the road is made to be written on and mailed, the way roadside cards always were — the sending guide covers the ritual.
How long is Route 66?
Route 66 ran more than 2,400 miles from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California, crossing eight states. The exact length shifted over the decades as the road was realigned.
Why is it called the Mother Road?
John Steinbeck gave Route 66 the name in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, about the families who followed the road west during the Dust Bowl. The nickname stuck and is still the road's most famous title.
When did Route 66 end?
Route 66 was removed from the United States highway system in 1985 after the interstates bypassed it. Historic Route 66 markers and scenic byway segments keep the old road alive for travelers today.
Where can I find Route 66 postcards?
Roadside shops along the remaining route, antique stores, and online marketplaces all carry them — and the atlas offers a new vintage-style card for the road itself, filed under Illinois and Oklahoma.