Getting Your Kicks on Route 66
02 July 2012
A truck travels on U.S. Route 66 east of Galena, Kansas, in 2003
BARBARA KLEIN: Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Barbara Klein.
STEVE EMBER: And I'm Steve Ember. This week, we go for a ride through the colorful history of Route 66, a road that has been called "The Main Street of America.”
(MUSIC: "Route 66"/Rosemary Clooney)
BARBARA KLEIN: The idea for Route 66 started in Oklahoma. Citizens there wanted to link their state with states to the east and west. By the nineteen twenties, federal officials wanted to connect state roads to provide a shorter, faster way across the country. So a plan was developed to connect existing state roads into one long national highway.
United States Highway 66 was established on November eleventh, nineteen twenty-six. It was one the first federal highways. It crossed eight states. It was three thousand eight hundred kilometers long.
Route 66 became the most famous road in America. It passed through the center of many cities and towns. It crossed deserts, mountains, valleys and rivers.
STEVE EMBER: In the nineteen thirties, people suffered through the Great Depression. In Oklahoma, many poor families lost their farms because of dust storms. So they traveled west to California on Route 66 in search of a better life.
In nineteen thirty-nine, John Steinbeck wrote about these families in "The Grapes of Wrath."
最新
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25