“My father thought we should stay at home. One of entrepreneur Fred Harvey’s many establishments along Route 66, Tellez Wayne was one of many “Harvey Girls” who looked after tourists, troops, and other travelers as they passed through Gallup on their journeys. 'We were into everything.'ĭuring World War II, Tellez Wayne worked at a hotel called the Harvey House, El Navajo along the highway near Gallup, New Mexico to support her 13 siblings after their miner father was injured on the job. 'If it weren't for us women, there wouldn't be no 66,' Virginia Tellez Wayne, who once worked at several hotels along the highway, tells Bryan. But while many of these people were men, they were far from alone. During the Dust Bowl years in the 1930s, as many Midwesterners started migrating to California, the highway drew all sorts of people, from entrepreneurs to the people they hired to run their restaurants, hotels, and stores, Bryan writes. Route 66 was first established in 1926, and it quickly became a popular path for people moving westward. It's about pulling out these lesser known stories that really help people connect and understand our history.' 'We realized that Route 66, as a symbol of America, had the potential to tell so many deeper stories. 'We saw there was this great narrative about Route 66 out there that tended to be focused on the traveler's experience,' Kaisa Barthuli, project manager for the National Park Service Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program tells Susan Montoya Bryan for the Associated Press.

Founded by filmmaker Katrina Parks, the oral history project seeks to gather the stories of the females who lived and worked along Route 66, just like the many male travelers whose stories have dominated the narratives set along the highway. Titled “The Women on the Mother Road,” the project is supported by the National Park Service and Cinefemme, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting women filmmakers and documentarians. Now, an oral history project sponsored by the National Park Service is seeking to tell the stories of the women who lived and worked along the famous highway. But while many of these stories center on the experience of the travelers and road trippers who rode down the highway, Route 66 was central to the lives of many people along its path. Once stretching almost all the way across the country, the highway that John Steinbeck called “the Mother Road” has been memorialized in songs and stories over the decades. Perhaps no single road is more significant to modern American folklore than the fabled Route 66.

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