Postcards from Route 66: The Mother Road Across the USA

Postcards from Route 66 is a collection of illustrated and photographic postcards of the Mother Road’s hotels, bustling burgs, greasy spoons, and natural wonders, spanning Route 66’s golden age of the 1930s through the mid-1960s.

There is perhaps no better visual record of Route 66’s iconic sites than the thousands of illustrated and photographic postcards that have been produced over the years.

They promote the Mother Road’s motels, hotels, tourist traps, trading posts, bustling burgs, greasy spoons, and natural wonders.

This massive collection gathers together more than 400 of the finest examples of postcard art from Route 66’s golden age: the 1930s through the mid-1960s, an era before long-distance car travel was largely supplanted by the airlines.

Route 66 historian Joe Sonderman has curated the very best out of his 20,000-card archive to document a journey down the Mother Road through the decades, state-by-state from east to west.

Visit landmark stops like the Rock Village Court, the Meramec Caverns, Mule Trading Post, and Wigwam Village in cities that include Chicago, Springfield, Amarillo, Tucumcari, Flagstaff, Barstow, Santa Monica, and many, many more.

The fruit of Sonderman’s labor is the definitive book collection of Route 66 postcards. Postcards from Route 66 is a valuable visual reference documenting the evolution of the famous highway and its equally famous roadside stops as well as a historical record of the time period, complete with many notes both hastily scribbled and thoughtfully composed by Route 66 travelers through the decades.

About Joe Sonderman: A St. Louis radio personality and traffic reporter for more than 25 years, Joe Sonderman maintains a website of Route 66 postcards (www.66postcards.com) and is the author of four books on the history of America’s Mother Road. He now works at the Missouri Department of Transportation, watching the roads of today while treasuring those of yesteryear.

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