Route 66 started in Pinehurst (so to speak)

On this day in 1926: Meeting in Pinehurst, the American Association of Highway Officials approves final plans for Route 66, which will link Chicago and Los Angeles and open the West to a new wave of migration and development.

By 1984, when the last stretch of the storied Route 66 is decommissioned, it will long since have been supplanted by the interstate highway system.

[Here’s Nelson Riddle’s still cool theme from the eponymous early-’60s  TV series plus a more recent Western swing take by Asleep at the Wheel.]