Biking for Your Kicks on Bicycle Route 66

For over 50 years, motorists traveled the legendary U.S. Route 66 – popularly known as Route 66 or the Mother Road – from Chicago, Illinois to the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles, California. Now it’s the cyclists’ turn.

In view of the strong association between the historic roadway and America’s love affair with the automobile, it is perhaps ironic that hundreds of travelers will now attain independence from the motor vehicle by traveling Bicycle Route 66 under their own steam. While the cafes and grocery stores along the way remain important fuel stops for them, traveling cyclists can enjoy a certain satisfaction as they whiz past the many gas stations found in the towns and cities they visit.

Over the years Route 66 was in service there were multiple alignments of its path. Some of them exist today as Historic Route 66 and are signed in various ways. In many places Historic Route 66 was replaced by interstate highways. Bicycle Route 66 travels west on bike paths, county roads and state, federal and interstate highways. However, please note Bicycle Route 66 does not always follow Historic Route 66. Deviations were made based on present-day conditions.

Right from the start in Chicago, Illinois, Bicycle Route 66 diverges from Historic Route 66 due to heavy traffic conditions. The official start location on Lake Michigan in Grant Park at Buckingham Fountain allows the use of multiple bike paths and trails along with city streets out of the congestion to meet up with Historic Route 66 in Elwood. A short distance later, the route begins its parallel path with I-55 passing through the capital city of Springfield as well as many smaller communities.

Much of the route in Illinois is characterized by the prairie landscape and rolling hills. In Madison County, the route takes advantage of a number of county-maintained trails to the Mississippi River crossing on the historic Chain of Rocks Bridge into St. Louis, Missouri.

The Riverfront Trail leads cyclists into the city and past the Gateway Arch commemorating the launch of the Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery Expedition. Once through the suburbs on city and county roads, Bicycle Route 66 begins paralleling I-44 mostly on frontage roads and some county highways. Not far out of St. Louis, cyclists will encounter the rolling hills of the northern reaches of the Ozark Mountains. West of Springfield, Missouri, the route leaves Historic 66 in favor of quieter county roads and state highways. Leaving Bicycle Route 66 rejoins Historic Route 66 east of Joplin.

Kansas contains only about a dozen miles of Route 66, the least of any of the eight states the highway runs through. That didn’t prevent the residents of the area from taking great pride in “owning” part of the highway.

Once the route reaches the Oklahoma border, the flat to rolling landscape will encompass a variety of different prairie types until it reaches the Great Plains of the Texas panhandle. In general, the terrain across Oklahoma is a gradual uphill again paralleling interstates, first I-44, then I-40.

Amarillo, Texas is the last large city on the route before you reach the midpoint of Historic Route 66 in Adrian, Texas. Up to this point in the route, services of most types are regularly available and there are no extended sections of sparse services. However, the availability of bike shops decreases as the route heads west.

Much of Bicycle Route 66 across New Mexico is either on or roughly paralleling I-40 and/or I-25. One notable exception is where the route heads north to Santa Fe following an older alignment of Historic Route 66 before returning south to Albuquerque. Cyclists wishing a more direct route can opt to ride the shoulder of I-40 to Tijeras then return to the route. A second exception takes cyclists onto the Turquoise Trail/State Highway 14 between Santa Fe and Tijeras providing beautiful open vistas before returning to Historic Route 66.

West of Albuquerque to Chambers, Arizona and again past Flagstaff, Arizona, Bicycle Route 66 passes through several Native American lands known as Pueblos, Nations, and Reservations. These are sovereign lands with their own cultural flavor. Etiquette across them will require you to be a bit more circumspect in your behavior. Stealth camping is not permitted and in most, permission must be granted to photograph or otherwise record the scenery and sites. While most of the roads through these lands are state owned, those on the Pueblo Alternate through Acoma Pueblo are not and are subject to closures periodically. A visit to the Sky City Cultural Center and Haak’u Museum is a must if riding this 27.1 mile alternate.

Just west of Grants, New Mexico, cyclists will cross the Continental Divide as they pedal through the El Malpais National Monument. While it may be tempting to shorten the route outside of Grants west to Gallup using I-40, it is not recommended. Shoulder conditions are dangerous to impassable and there are no paralleling service or frontage roads to ride.

Gallup, New Mexico is home to the Brickyard Bike Park, which celebrated its grand opening in September 2013, with cycling celebrity Levi Leipheimer officiating. The bike park, coupled with a 15-year-long effort to build trails outside of town and recast the city as a mountain-biking mecca, has earned Gallup a formal designation by the state legislature as the Adventure Capital of New Mexico. Today, the area boasts two major networks of professionally designed, curvy singletrack trails, including the flagship High Desert Trail. Gallup hosts more mountain bike races than any other community in New Mexico and the High Desert Trail system has been designated a National Recreation Trail.

Bicycle Route 66 breaks from following Historic Route 66 to head south through the Petrified Forest National Park. Its hauntingly beautiful archaeological sites and unique geological formations include, not surprisingly, petrified trees.

In Flagstaff, Arizona you’ll see your first bike shop since Albuquerque. From Flagstaff, cyclists will ride a combination of I-40, paralleling service roads and county roads to Ash Fork before riding onto Old Route 66 the rest of the way across Arizona. From five miles south of Kingman to Topock at the California border, Old Route 66 has been designated by the Bureau of Land Management as the Historic Route 66 National Back Country Byway. It crosses Sitgreaves Pass in the rugged Black Mountains, where the BLM warns: “Travelers are advised that the portion of the highway passing through the mountains is a very narrow two-lane with no shoulders, extremely tight switchbacks, and many steep drop-offs.”

The entry into California drops cyclists into a long, desert stretch with very limited services from Needles to Barstow. This region is subject to violent thunderstorms and downpours in the summer monsoon and winter storm seasons. The weather pattern can result in flash flooding that closes the former Route 66 now known as the National Trails Highway (NTH) and thus Bicycle Route 66. Over the years NTH has fallen into some disrepair and, in September 2014, a particularly bad storm system came through not only flooding the area but further damaging NTH and several of the original Route 66 bridges causing long term closures of the road.

I-40 was built to replace the NTH. It is now the main thoroughfare between these two towns, and thankfully, has a well-maintained riding surface. While interstate riding was not our preference when planning this route, it is the best solution to the problem of travel between Needles and Barstow. Though I-40 is normally closed to bicycling, Adventure Cycling has worked with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to come to an agreement about temporarily allowing cyclists to ride sections of I-40 to continue on Bicycle Route 66. (See the map updates and corrections for Bicycle Route 66, Section 6 for current detour information.)

Once out of the desert, services improve and traffic increases as the route becomes urban through the suburbs of Los Angeles. While there are several plaques in the area denoting the end of Historic Route 66, the terminus of Bicycle Route 66 is on the Santa Monica Pier at the sign located where the road meets the pier.

Photo by Michael Clark