Route 66 is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. The historic highway stretches approximately 2,400 miles from Illinois to California, passing through eight states, though it is now decommissioned.

Known as the "Mother Road," a designation given by John Steinbeck, Route 66 served as an escape route for people fleeing the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. Journalist and Route 66 historian Michael Wallis said, "Nothing about Route 66 is predictable." He added, "It's a word you should never use." Wallis also said, "It's unpredictable," and "That's why I like it."

Angel Delgadillo, a 99-year-old retired barber in Seligman, Arizona, was first interviewed by CBS News in 1989. Delgadillo proposed designating parts of Route 66 as "historic." He said, "It touched millions and millions and millions and millions of people, for years and years and years and years and years." Delgadillo noted that when Interstate 40 was completed near Seligman in 1984, "the traveling public took to I-40 like ducks take to water." Today, tour buses arrive in Seligman almost daily.

The Midpoint Café in Adrian, Texas, marks the midway point of Route 66, situated 1,139 miles from both Chicago and Los Angeles. Other sites along the route include Cadillac Ranch, located west of Amarillo, Texas. This art installation, created in 1974 by a San Francisco artist group called "The Ant Farm," consists of car sculptures.

Buck Atom's Cosmic Curios, a gift shop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, operates out of a former filling station. Mary Beth Babcock, who runs the shop, imagined the character Buck Atom the Space Cowboy. The Blue Swallow Motel in Tucumcari, New Mexico, is currently family-run, with Dawn Federico and Rob Federico serving as caretakers. Dawn Federico said, "This is a little bubble, back into the 1950s and the '60s." She added, "We call it our little happy bubble," and "And it's a neat place to be."