The search for the soul of Route 66 begins with its prehistory, via a visit to the railroad yards. In the late 1800s, as the railroads began in the west, the road to California was a set of perils: wolf packs hunting at night quicksand and marsh; long treks across burning deserts, wind and dust storms across Texas and Oklahoma. It was almost easier--and definitely safer--to the take the schooner to California, as the ‘49ers did, and travel around South America, than to cross the plains, mountains, and deserts of America. Before Route 66, there was a stagecoach trail, a pony express rider; and before that, a path barely a foot wide, allowing the tribes to trade with one another.

The railroads changed that isolation, as they made their way cross-crossed Illinois and the continent. I’ve been studying railroad maps for months now, and I think I’ve finally traced the ancestry of Route 66 to the rails it followed.

The Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy carried passengers out to Cicero, then joined the Gulf, Mobile, & Ohio, heading South toward St. Louis. At Joliet, the Elgin, Joliet, and Eastern line kicked in until Bloomington, when Route 66 follows the Gulf Mobile & Ohio to Springfield. There, it joined the Illinois Central. The Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy reappears; and at St. Louis the Frisco line begins (officially, the St. Louis and San Francisco). The Missouri and Pacific (MoPac) line guided Route 66 into the Southwest, alongside branches of the Rock Island line to Oklahoma City. From there west, it’s the Santa Fe--which swallowed the slower-growing Atlantic and Pacific line, all the way to California, where Route 66 follows portions of both the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific. Finally, the "foamers" (or rail buffs) tell me, the last line Route 66 followed as it cozied up to the rails is the Pacific Electric Trolleys and Henry Huntington’s Red Cars, right into the center of L.A. Each time it was the same: villages formed around the railroad’s base camp--usually near a river, to water the trains and horses. Roads radiated out from the base camps, leading to a network of towns.

When the Rock Island Line joined the Santa Fe’s tracks at Tucumcari, New Mexico, in 1911, the later path of Route 66 was set. The early dreams of railroad builders guided the settlement of the Midwest and Southwest along this route 66.

Route 66 stole the railroad’s fire and cargo and eventually its passengers. The railroad stole riders from the pony express and stage coaches. Sometime, another means of transportation will steal from the interstate and Route 66. It’s one long carnival of transport. Route 66 is a palimpsest, like those clay tablets used before paper, where one message overlaid another. On Route 66 each new layer of asphalt, poured over gravel, over the wagon ruts, shows faint traces of travelers who came before. This is what makes the Weiss’s task of preservation complex: Which period of history is most important? Is there a case for digging up Route 66 to "preserve" the Indian trails beneath it?