Working in concert, the American Association of State Highway Officials and the Bureau of Public Roads adopted a uniform highway numbering system and corresponding map on November 11, 1926. The numbering system and map replaced the confusing patchwork of highways and trails, like the Lincoln Highway or the Old Trails Road, with an official network of numbered highways sanctioned by federal and state highway authorities.

Since then, a small group of these highways have attained the status of cultural icon. There’s Route 1, which snakes all the way from Maine to Florida. Route 101 is celebrated for its majestic views of the Pacific Ocean, while Route 6 was immortalized in “On the Road,” Jack Kerouac’s classic novel.

The most famous, though, is arguably Route 66, nicknamed the “Main Street of America” and the “Mother Road.”

Yet as the towns that dot the highway prepare to celebrate its centennial, I’ve found myself wondering what it is, exactly, that’s being celebrated.

As a historian of Route 66, I’ve written about how there are really two versions of this 2,448-mile (3,940-kilometer) stretch of pavement.

There’s the actual highway, which reflected the 20th-century expansion of the nation’s infrastructure. Then there’s the mythic highway – a cultural icon imbued with nostalgia for a specific, 20th-century idea of romance, adventure, freedom and the American West.

There was almost no 66

As state highway commissioners in the 1920s wrangled over the specifics of the nation’s new highway system, they prized highway numbers that ended in zero, since they indicated a cross-country route. The thinking went that these routes would get the most traffic and, with it, the most business.

Oklahoma State Highway Commissioner Cyrus Avery had been a big booster........

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