(jaunty piano music)
♪
(narrator)
Since its inception in 1926,
Route 66 has been an icon
of the American West
and a defining element
of the American experience.
♪
From Chicago
to Los Angeles,
the Mother Road
takes us on a journey
from the East
to the American West,
with its wide open skies
and a mix of different cultures.
(woman)
Route 66 has opened
the gateway
to a lot of opportunities.
(woman)
You can still drive it.
I'm like, "Oh, my gosh,
how cool is that?"
-Where y'all from?
-Germany.
(narrator)
International visitors come
by the tens of thousands,
hungry for
an American experience.
(lively music)
(speaking in foreign language)
♪
(tour guide)
But the most famous person
of all...
-Who?
-Me.
(laughing)
They grew up watching
American television.
Route 66 with George Maharis,
Martin Milner.
And they're all here
to see America of yesterday.
(narrator)
Beloved television shows,
like the Route 66 TV show,
and films like Easy Rider
have celebrated the road
from a male perspective
in which women are seldom
in the driver's seat.
(mellow music)
(Heidi)
We forgot that women
were on those journeys,
we forgot that women
were working all along the way
in those businesses.
(narrator)
Despite its moniker,
The Mother Road,
little attention has been paid
to diverse women's experiences
across many different cultures
and almost 100 years of history.
♪
(woman)
When I first got to the motel
and they were
having a convention,
and they said, "Well, no,
a woman doesn't come.
There's no women."
And so they put this man
beside me.
I don't know who he is.
But they just said,
"Well, no, you just--
just has to be a man
with you."
It's a mirror
held up to the nation.
A road that can be, really,
a living classroom.
(woman)
She was entrepreneurial,
she was very business oriented,
and she allowed us to live
a very comfortable life.
(narrator)
From archeologists
to politicians,
and countless entrepreneurs,
women overcame segregation
and gender discrimination
to build fulfilling lives
for themselves
and generations to come
on America's most beloved road.
This is their story.
(traffic humming)
So the story
of the American West
has been told
as a story of mobile man.
(twangy banjo music)
The man on horseback,
the cowboy riding off
onto the prairie,
the Pony Express rider,
the stage driver,
the railroad engineer.
You can name
any kind of stereotype
of man conquering the West,
and it's a man in motion.
♪
(Heidi)
Women who were traveling,
and they were always
at a very strong disadvantage
because they were
at the mercy of men.
They might be propositioned,
there would be rough language.
These were not
comfortable situations
for a proper woman
to be in.
And so when the automobile
came out,
these women said, "Wow,
I would rather go by car
because that offers me
privacy, safety,"
from the hubbub around them.
(narrator)
Women were eager
from the start
to tackle the challenge
of driving automobiles.
Controlling one's mobility
was a step towards liberation.
(soft piano music)
♪
(Virginia)
There were a lot of women
driving around in the Southwest,
and I think of somebody like
the Home Extension agent
Fabiola Cabeza de Baca.
And Fabiola would have been
traveling on Route 66.
The United States Government
wanted to help homemakers
perform their work
more efficiently,
so they started a kind
of Home Extension movement.
And the idea was our educated
professional specialists
will help
the average housewife
have a happier, healthier,
more productive life.
So she joined the
Home Extension service in 1929,
but she did not know
how to drive
when she decided
to do that.
She was told, "You are
gonna be out on the road
driving throughout
Northern New Mexico,"
an enormous territory,
until 1932 when her car
was hit by a train.
(train whistle)
(train chugging)
She was injured so badly
that she had to have
a leg amputated.
And it was--seemed as if
she would not recover from this
and would not be able
to resume her profession.
But after two years
of recovery,
she just got another car
that was fitted out
specially for her
and went back on the road
with a wooden leg
and had another career
for another 25 years
in the Home Extension Service
all over New Mexico,
doing her work
in both English and Spanish,
learning some Tewa and Towa,
so that she could work
with women in pueblos.
(Tomas)
And she wrote these
two or three cookbooks.
She, I think, was very
influential in New Mexico
to document
Hispanic cooking styles
and also to preserve
the history
of Hispana cooking
in New Mexico.
(Virginia)
So the first real
mass-market automobile
was Henry Ford's Model T,
of course.
And Henry Ford
did not think
that women were gonna be
the drivers of this car.
He saw this
as the family car for America,
but it was Dad who was gonna be
driving this thing.
Mom would be a passenger,
because Mom,
if Mom was gonna drive,
he'd have to put all kinds
of frills on this car,
things like
an automatic starter
instead of a crank on it.
At one point,
when General Motors
began to manufacture cars
in a variety of colors,
and the Model T
was still black,
and he said, "Yeah,
you can have any color you want,
as long as it's black."
And then they said, "Well, why
are you only making a black car?
Why don't you make cars
in colors?"
And he said, "Well, I'm not
in the millinery business."
(twangy banjo music)
(narrator)
The first cars marketed to women
were electric cars.
Battery, longevity,
and miles between charges
were issues, however.
And so women had to prove
they were up for the challenge
of not only driving
but also fixing
the messier and less
easy-to-handle gas automobile.
(water splashes)
♪
(Virginia)
Early road trips
that women took,
they liked to take pictures
of themselves
when they came into
really difficult circumstances.
Women wanted to prove
that they could go
on long distance drives,
that they could drive
gasoline cars
that were tough and dirty
and heavy to drive
and had to be cranked.
So there was a kind of
"I can do this" mentality
about driving
at that time.
(narrator)
After women heroically drove
ambulances during World War I,
it was clear
women could drive well,
even under extreme conditions.
Women participated
in the Good Roads Movement,
which culminated
in the creation
of a National Highway System
in 1926.
(soft piano music)
Politicians, boosters,
and businessmen
all scrambled to get
their piece of the pie,
including Cyrus Avery,
the father of Route 66.
(Sean)
Cyrus Avery
really produced a road
that I think has been
enduring and important
in American history.
This is a diagonal road.
It's an even number road,
which means it's east to west,
but it's going north and south
at the same time.
He represented
a modern economic examination
of what a highway could do
or transportation route could do
to some of the poorest counties
in the United States.
(Glenda)
Claim to fame for Springfield
is the birthplace of Route 66
because that is where
the group met
and sent the telegram in
that they would accept
the 66 designation.
And it came from Springfield.
(woman)
And you want this sent as
a regular telegram, of course.
(man)
Oh, sure, this is news.
(Heidi)
And the roads
were horrible, unpaved,
and especially in
mountainous regions
where there was lots
of rain and snow,
like Northern Arizona,
Northern New Mexico.
Those roads were impossible
to travel.
And in the winter months,
they would be washed out
completely.
And places like Route 66
would just close down
in the winter months
in the northern regions.
So, there were a lot of women
who ran for office in the West.
They often sat on committees
that you would normally
expect women to be on.
Oh, education committees
and child welfare committees.
But they also sat on
good roads committees.
And when they went in,
they wanted budgets for roads.
To pave them,
to improve signage,
so that traveling was safe.
(narrator)
Despite being told she couldn't
win because of her gender,
Isabella Greenway
paved the way on Route 66
and brought women
to the political forefront.
(Heidi)
She was from elite society,
but she'd grown up
in ranching conditions.
When she made her debut
to society in New York City,
she became close friends,
lifelong friends,
with Eleanor Roosevelt.
These two women had,
very early on,
strong political instincts,
and Isabella ended up
coming out West
because her husband,
like so many people
who had came West,
had tuberculosis.
And when he died,
she married his close friend,
John Greenway,
and moved to Arizona.
And got involved
in veterans affairs,
'cause he was a veteran,
and also involved
with politics
'cause he was involved
with the progressive party.
When he died, she bought
a ranch outside of Williams,
and she used it
as a summer retreat,
but she did entertain guests,
like her close friends,
dignitaries, state officials,
and Eleanor
and Franklin Roosevelt.
She brought 'em here
during the--
through the state
on a whistle-stop tour,
and she entertained them
at her beautiful spread
on 110,000 acres
outside of Williams.
When she was done with that,
her name was sort of
a household name
here in Arizona.
She ran for public office,
she ran for Congress,
and she was the first female
to represent Arizona
in Congress,
elected in 1933
in a special election
with over 70% of the vote.
Tells you how popular she was.
She had sort of a mandate
when she went to Congress,
and she had several issues
that were important to her,
veterans affairs
but also good roads.
She worked very hard
in Congress
to get a great budget passed
that gave funding
to finally pave Route 66
in the late '30s,
and it really improved
transportation
in this part of the country.
(lively piano music)
♪
(Joline)
My father was working on
Route 66 on the road crew,
I presume with machines.
And they went through Halltown,
where my mother lived,
and they met,
I don't know how,
and fell in love
and got married.
Daddy started accepting jobs
that promoted him
a little bit each time,
and we moved
to Miami, Oklahoma,
when I was in fourth grade.
Daddy had his own
Texaco account.
It was--became the second
largest Texaco station
in the United States.
It must have been an incredible
and emotional rollercoaster ride
living on the road.
For a family running businesses
along Route 66,
especially in the rural areas,
all family members
played a role.
For example, wives
or girlfriends or spouses
played a role in pumping gas
or taking money
-or working in the kitchen.
-They didn't always
get counted
in the census
because working women
who were married
often were not counted
that way
because they were not
the primary breadwinners.
Only primary breadwinners,
their husbands, were counted.
We would come in
and she'd have
black and white Oxfords on
and her plaid shirt.
(Joline)
Mother was out there.
She would fix breakfast
for whoever's at home
and then run out to the garage
and open it up.
She put gas in cars,
washed the windshields,
do all the things
that they used to do.
We bought
the new 1936 Chevrolet.
I was eight years old.
And my brother was six.
And she came to get us
at school.
We were going home.
And she turned the motor on
and we hopped.
She didn't put
the clutch in right, I think.
And so we did that
four or five times
till we got to the corner,
and then she pulled down
on the gear shift.
We went around the corner
on two wheels.
And she grabbed the knob
off the gear shift
and a team of horses in a wagon
came out of the alley
across the street
from where we were.
And she managed
to avoid them somehow.
And we roared,
in first gear I'm sure,
all the way home,
which was not very far.
And she said,
"I'm never driving again."
-And she didn't.
-And she never did.
She never drove again.
(narrator)
Despite some women's ambivalence
to the horseless carriage,
with few opportunities
at home,
women embraced the automobile
when love or necessity
forced them to
on Route 66.
(Keiko)
My grandmother came here
around 1917 from Japan.
I understand it was a dispute
with her parents,
and she decided
to become a picture bride,
exchange pictures,
and she found a match
with my grandfather.
She was very independent.
She was really a character.
(Susie)
So here are the--
Yutaro and Naka.
-That's right.
-Uyeda.
-In the Western clothing, huh?
-Right, yes.
My grandfather
came here first
at the turn of the century,
early 1900s,
via Hawaii from Japan.
He worked on the railroads there
and some field work,
and then he had
the opportunity to come here
to California
and Los Angeles
to work on
the railroad tracks.
And so, when the railroad tracks
stopped at Monrovia,
that's where he settled
and he loved it here.
But Monrovia, as--
for a Japanese man
or Japanese family,
there weren't any jobs
available.
And from what I understand,
there were jobs
but not for Japanese.
They were not
American citizens,
and so they could not
own property.
So my grandfather
bought property
in the name of my uncle,
because he was born here,
he was an American citizen.
(mellow music)
Then he went into farming,
and he became very prosperous
here and well-known,
farming the fields
behind the property
and also looking
for empty properties
for him to garden
and grow his crops.
My grandmother
and my mother and aunt
sold the fruits
and primarily strawberries.
My grandmother
did not work the crops.
From the beginning,
she took care of the money.
She was--didn't like it here
and was planning
to go back to Japan,
so my grandfather
didn't know
about her sending money back
there for her future needs.
I think it was about five cents
or a few pennies
for a whole flat
of strawberries.
So my grandfather,
in marketing, what he'd do,
he'd put the flats
of strawberries along Route 66.
(Susie)
And it says in the back,
"First car."
-The family now had a car.
-Car, mm-hm. Yes.
Look at that car.
(Susie)
And this photograph of Isamu
says 1928.
I think this was the one
that was prepared
for his service or funeral.
(Keiko)
Oh, 'cause my mother would
have been five at that time,
and so he was four years--
about four years older,
so, yes.
My uncle, Isamu,
was nine when he was killed
after he was kicked
by one of the big horses.
They were playing on it.
He was at
the Children's Hospital
because he survived for--
I guess for several months
after.
My grandmother visited him
in the hospital almost daily.
I never saw her drive
ever in my life,
but evidently,
at that time,
she did drive the car
into Los Angeles
down Route 66
to visit him.
I don't think she would
have had a driver's license.
It was just a tragic accident,
and the firstborn son
for both of 'em.
My mother was born on Route 66.
My mother is second one from--
(Susie)
Second girl from the left.
It's an incredible picture
that was captured
of the Japanese-American
community in Monrovia.
My mother lived
on Huntington Drive.
Monroe School was only
about three blocks away.
This is where I went
to elementary school,
right in Monrovia.
And when she was growing up,
from Huntington,
she was not able
to attend Monroe.
They couldn't cross one street
that was just three blocks
from them.
That's how
they were segregated.
(Candacy)
44 out of the 89 counties
along Route 66
were sundown towns.
And sundown towns
were all-white communities.
They were all-white on purpose.
There were still,
at that time,
many gas stations that wouldn't
serve Black people.
A lot of people traveled
with chauffeurs hats,
especially for
the middle class Black drivers
who had nicer cars,
so if they got pulled over,
they--that was the story
that they would tell
the police officer is that,
you know,
"This isn't my car,
this is my employer's car."
And he'd ask,
"Well, where's your hat?"
And they'd have
the chauffer's hat there.
Those were the things
that they had to do
to travel safely
across the country.
(narrator)
Segregation was the law
during the era of Jim Crow.
Life and travel opportunities
were not the same
for all Americans.
But some women entrepreneurs
found their niche
serving those who would not
otherwise be served on Route 66.
(Irv)
Alberta Ellis,
Northcutt Ellis, properly,
was my grandmother,
and she was a business woman
in Springfield, Missouri,
and she--originally,
she worked as a--
at the Bell Telephone Company
there.
And she was very resourceful.
I'm sorry, the line is busy.
I'll keep trying and call you.
(Irv)
And she saw a need
for travelers on the road,
African-American travelers.
The law at that time
said that there was segregation,
so that the African Americans
couldn't stay
in the white hotels,
like the Kentwood Arms
or the Colonial
or places of that sort
back in those days,
but they were allowed
to stay at Alberta's.
Within the hotel, she had
other businesses, of course.
She hired local people
or she allowed them
to rent space.
So you had a beauty shop,
a barber shop.
She had a rumpus room.
You know, so there was quite
a complex for African Americans,
and it became well-known
and travelers came there.
Alberta's Hotel
was in the Green Book.
(Candacy)
The Negro Motorist Green Book
was created
by Victor H. Green.
And he was a postal worker
from Harlem.
And he was a Black man.
And he saw that even in,
you know, in the 1930s,
even though
he was in New York,
there was incredible
racial discrimination.
It was like a AAA
for Black people.
(Irv)
When someone comes to town
like Ray Charles,
he's not permitted
to stay in a place
where he's going to entertain,
you know, people.
He has to come, you know,
and stay at Alberta's.
We have records of the people
who stayed at the hotel.
And some of them
you would recognize,
like Roy Hamilton
and, you know,
names like Ray Charles,
the Globetrotters, you know,
Frankie Lymon
and the Teenagers.
This is in the early days
of rock and roll.
She worked
an eight-hour-a-day job
and then did all of the rest
of this after that.
(Candacy)
Green Book businesses
were owned by Blacks,
but then there were some
that weren't.
Here we are at Clifton's,
the original west end
of the Mother Road.
Clifton's was
a Green Book property.
There are 220 Green Book
properties in Los Angeles,
23 of them downtown,
and only, out of those 23,
six are still standing.
Clifton's was established
in 1932,
and that was right in the
Depression era restaurant.
It was one
of the classic places to come,
not only because it was so--
it was right in the middle
of downtown,
it was right at the very end
of Route 66.
It was also a place
where you could
Dine Free Unless Delighted,
that was the term.
They had a five-cent meal,
or you could pay what you felt
like the food was worth.
So you had the option
of not paying,
which was very unique,
but in the spirit
of the times
and in the spirit
of Clifford Clinton,
who owned Clifton's.
Clifford Clinton was a white man
who owned this property.
He thought of this
in the Depression
when there was still, you know,
so much fear and scarcity,
but he saw that there was
still too much here
for people to--
to not have a warm meal
and not have the basics.
And he created a business model
that made it possible
for him to give away
free food.
(narrator)
Across the Southwest
along Route 66,
elite women were involved
in pursuits
that combined
historic preservation
with packaging of the imagined
past of the Southwest
-to appeal to tourists.
-So we're here
at the Casa de Adobe in
Highland Park, Los Angeles.
It was built by the Hispanic
Society of California.
(Marva)
It's a replica of a 19th century
Spanish rancho home.
And it was built
with the purpose
of introducing the public
to the early Spanish settlers.
(Maren)
This site is unique
in that it was always
an interpretative
or educational site,
never an active
working ranch site.
However, it was used
for many different types
of programs over the years,
and especially during
the peak popularity
of Route 66.
(Marva)
For the first few years,
it was a few blocks
from Route 66,
but that still benefited
the visitation.
And then, in the early 1930s,
the alignment was changed
and the Casa
sat right on Route 66.
This booklet
is a Casa de Adobe handbook.
In the inside cover,
actually,
we have a photograph
of Señora Florencia
Sepulveda de Schoneman.
She's saying,
"Buenas tardes, amigas!"
She was the Casa's
first hostess.
And she worked very hard
to give visitors
some kind of sense of early
Spanish Californian life.
(Maren)
Right behind me
is the Southwest Museum
of the American Indian,
which is perched
up on a hillside.
The Southwest Museum
was the first museum
in Los Angeles.
And the Casa de Adobe
came under the auspices
of the Southwest Museum
in 1925.
(Maren)
Casa de Adobe was hand-built
using traditional adobe brick,
brick by brick,
tens of thousands of bricks
are what make this structure.
(Marva)
And one of the curators there,
Mark Raymond Harrington,
became very interested in it.
He was interested in
the architecture of adobes,
preserving California history,
and he became
a great supporter.
And he worked
very closely
with Señora Florencia
Sepulveda de Schoneman.
They established
a Casa de Adobe Committee
to raise money
to furnish the Casa,
to open it,
and to care for it.
(narrator)
At the Southwest Museum
up the hill,
women also worked in
anthropology and archaeology.
Bertha Parker Pallan Cody
was the first female
Native American archaeologist.
She worked alongside
her uncle and father
at dig sites
across the Southwest.
However,
her title was secretary.
She exhibited her findings
at the Southwest Museum
and wrote for its publication
Masterkey,
all the while
participating in events
at the Casa de Adobe.
(dreamy music)
Route 66 traverses
over 29 tribal lands,
and its immediate predecessor
in the area
was the Atchison, Topeka,
Santa Fe Railroad.
(train whistle)
Instead of selling
land rights to the railroad,
Laguna Pueblo traded
land access for jobs
for pueblo members.
(soft singing, drumming)
(Larrilynn)
We are celebrating
the Laguna Colony Days Festival
in Winslow, Arizona.
These are two days of
celebrating the Laguna culture,
as well as the Laguna colony
that was affiliated
with the Santa Fe Railroad.
What happened was that
the officials over at Santa Fe
met with the governor of Laguna
and said, "We need your land."
A verbal agreement
was struck
and it's called
The Flower of Friendship.
This was during the 1920s.
So, what happened was,
in return for the land
being used by the Santa Fe,
jobs were distributed
among the Laguna people.
So men and women
from the Laguna reservation
-were relocated.
-Route 66 went right through
the city of Winslow,
and the Laguna colony
was on the west side of town
right next
to the railroad tracks.
Our boxcars were set up
right there,
and very nice boxcars,
apartments.
My parents were members
of the Santa Fe Indian Band.
That was part of the colony.
(Rosemary)
Back in the early 1920s,
the manager,
Charlie Earickson,
was with the group
and wanted some kind of music
being played at the picnic.
So there was a small group
that began by just picking up,
I believe it was a trumpet,
a bass horn,
and a dented peck horn.
And so the Santa Fe Railroad
just decided
that they would be
their sponsors
for them to be
a professional group,
to travel coast to coast.
(mellow music)
My father,
Tony "Lefty" Siow,
plays the big drum here.
♪
My mother,
Louise Riley Siow,
was the band carrier
for the Santa Fe Band.
And as a child,
I was with them,
so I am standing waiting
for them on the side here.
My folks bought me
a clarinet,
and I started
the elementary band.
And then when I transferred
into the Santa Fe Band,
the clarinet had to give
that first note and tune 'em up.
Ah, so that's--
I felt that I was important.
We traveled to the pow wows
in Flagstaff and Gallup.
In August, there was
these pow wows that went on,
'cause we paraded.
And then,
in November,
we were the host band
for the Arizona State Fair,
opening day.
I really enjoyed it.
This photo I have in hand
was taken in Washington, D.C.,
in 1952
when we were there
for the inauguration
of Eisenhower.
It's in front of
the Department of the Interior.
We were chosen
for the state of Arizona
to participate in this band,
and I was then
only about 13 years old.
And it was a long parade.
It was kind of exciting
'cause it was all Indians
and the menfolk
started doing the war whoops.
(Denise)
When the band went
to the Gallup Ceremonial
or the Flagstaff Pow Wow
or any place to perform,
we were right there
with them.
And it was such a big influence
in my life,
that I remember thinking,
"When I grow up,
I'm gonna learn
how to play every one
of those instruments."
So I went to college
and became a music teacher.
(energetic music)
(Ann-Mary)
The reason why they put
the railroad here
was that the 35th parallel
was a geographically natural way
to get across the country,
and so, you know,
that's why
the Beale Wagon Road was here,
then the railroad,
then Route 66.
I mean, it has more to do
with geography.
Route 66 is primarily known,
I think,
in people's imaginations,
as a tourism center.
But in Winslow and many
other towns along the Route,
it was also the business
or the civic district
for the people
that lived here.
(JoAn)
The La Posada sat right close
to the railroad tracks.
So, but it had Highway 66
running around
on the other side of it.
But if you came
on the train,
you definitely had to come in
to the Harvey House.
And if you ever came in
off the highway, again,
you had to park out front
and come in that door.
I worked behind the counter.
There was two
big horseshoe-type counters,
and they all had
these beautiful tile tops on,
I mean squares of tile.
(narrator)
The Fred Harvey Company
had a partnership
with the Atchison, Topeka,
Santa Fe Railroad
to provide
a fine dining experience
to travelers
along the railroad.
The Harvey Girls were employed
to work as waitstaff.
(Stephen)
Of course, you know,
the Harvey Girls started,
you know, 30 years
before women could vote.
So, it's a pretty feminist story
at each generation.
So, this has everything from
law notices from Fred's family,
and then every little story.
You can download these
online now,
but back then
you had to find them,
bring them in,
the microfilm,
to the University
of Pennsylvania Library,
and take pictures of them.
I mean this is actually
from our anniversary,
the year the book was done.
I wanted
an El Tovar seltzer bottle
that says Fred Harvey El Tovar
on it.
(narrator)
Whimsical ashtrays
for numerous smoking clientele
were among many things
designed by
the Fred Harvey Company's
lead interior designer
and architect,
Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter.
Colter drew upon the Southwest
and Native American traditions
and iconography
for inspiration.
(mellow jazz music)
(William)
I think what's really
interesting about Mary Colter
is her real focus
on trying to bring this idea
of what the Southwest
should look like to the public.
She's gone through
in color palettes
and the history
and the types of furniture,
as well as being able
to blend that into something
that somebody from back east
who's never been out west
might be able
to understand and see.
(Richard)
She had a real sensitivity
to the landscape.
She renovated
the Painted Desert Inn
in some really wonderful ways,
namely, she had worked
with Fred Kabotie before,
and Fred Kabotie,
a Hopi muralist,
on her invitation,
came in and painted
several amazing murals
that are still on the walls
of Painted Desert Inn today.
She was
a pretty feisty character,
and rightfully so.
She had to probably
assert herself.
(mellow piano music)
(Elizabeth)
El Navajo
was a Harvey House hotel
in Gallup, New Mexico.
It had a couple of openings,
but the second and main opening
was in the mid 1920s,
before Route 66
was officially completed,
but there was still enough
of Route 66,
from Albuquerque to Gallup,
that people came on Route 66
to attend the opening ceremony
of this hotel.
The hotel was controversial.
For the interiors
of El Navajo,
she wanted to give it
some authenticity.
She was very charmed
by sand paintings,
so she commissioned
Navajo artists
to recreate sand paintings
for the walls of the lobby
of El Navajo.
A lot of the elders
in the Navajo Nation
were disapproving
of that decision,
and they did quite a bit
of negotiation.
Finally, they arrived
at a compromise
where the Harvey Company
would invite the Navajos
to come and bless the building
and do a sacred ritual
to bless the paintings
so that they could be used
-and looked at.
-By a lot of descriptions,
she was a hard woman
to get along with.
But here's a woman
who had to work
in a predominantly male area.
She wanted to get things done.
And she chain-smoked cigarettes.
(Virginia)
So one thing that Route 66
did for Native peoples
was to give them a market
for their arts and crafts goods.
So, people
like Erna Fergusson,
who started a thing
called the Indian Detours,
automobile tours
for tourists
that would be led
by women guides
that would take them to
far-flung places in New Mexico
where they could purchase
Navajo blankets
or purchase pueblo pottery.
That kind of thing really had
a kind of invigorating effect
on the Indian
arts and crafts market.
And you think about people
like Maria Martinez,
who is understood
as an innovator
in pueblo pottery styles,
had a market that she would
never otherwise have had,
had that road
not been built
and had those tourists
not been coming through.
(narrator)
The Fred Harvey Company
expanded its reach
to accommodate
the motoring public
by partnering with
Erna Fergusson on the Detours.
These excursions departed
from Fred Harvey establishments,
conveniently positioned near
both the railroad and Route 66.
(woman)
How many people
are we expecting?
(Kathy)
Today it is four people.
They're from Arizona.
The first Harvey Car
left the Castaneda Hotel
in May of 1926.
So a lot of people
did come off the highway
and visited Las Vegas,
because, at that point,
it was only six miles
off the highway.
And then get into
those fabulous Harvey Cars,
which were Packards
and Cadillacs.
The Packards broke down
a lot on the highway
because it was pretty rough.
Of course,
everyone loves Santa Fe,
and that actually became
the headquarters
for the Indian Detours
about six months later.
(lively music)
♪
(Jenny)
So, this map that was painted
by Gerald Cassidy
was used
by the Detour couriers,
educated women trained in
Southwest history and art.
The couriers would sit down
and go through the map
and show them
where they were gonna go,
what they were gonna see,
how long
they were gonna be gone.
And so this was basically
today's Google or road map
back in the '20s.
(Barbara)
Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter
did a lot of work
at the hotel.
And so what's fascinating
about this room
is we believe this is
one of the most intact rooms
left in the hotel.
And so there's old photographs
that show the light fixtures.
He actually has sketches
showing what these light
fixtures should look like.
(Jenny)
So, that really was
a very watershed moment
for tourism changing
in the Southwest,
and Route 66 was the vehicle,
pardon the pun,
to have that transition from
rail travel into car travel.
(narrator)
Not everyone's experience
of Route 66 was so pleasant.
For Native American children
taken to off-reservation
boarding schools,
it was very traumatic.
The goal of the schools
was not education,
but rather eradication
of their culture and identity.
(Katherine)
I was born and raised
on Laguna Pueblo
in the house
that my grandfather built.
The road, Route 66,
ran right through
the pueblo itself.
As the cars would turn
a certain curve on that road,
the light would shine
on my face,
and I would be awake
some nights
just to watch those lights
on the wall and on my face
and wonder
where these cars were going.
The day schools in the villages
had grades up to sixth grade.
And by the time
you were in the seventh grade,
then you either
had to go to Santa Fe
or the Albuquerque
Indian School.
And the bus always
came to the villages
to collect children
to go to these schools.
When I boarded the bus
in my village of Paguate,
my grandmother took me
to the school to board the bus.
She carried my little suitcase.
And she was crying when I left.
And I think I cried
all the way to Albuquerque.
I did not know where--
exactly where I was going.
And I had no idea when I was
going to get back to my home.
Because none of this
was ever discussed.
When I got
to the boarding school,
it was so foreign,
living in a dormitory
with several hundred other girls
and doing everything
by the sound of bells.
I had to learn to speak English
in a hurry in order to get by.
My language was Keresian,
with bits of Spanish.
At the boarding school,
they wanted to do away
with our language
and our culture
and our traditions.
And that's the way
it was going to be.
And you were punished
if you spoke your language.
They actually were trying
to make you feel ashamed
you were Indian.
I think they did not succeed
very well with me
because I continued
to stay with my traditions,
my culture,
and my language.
(narrator)
As much as it was used
for tourism
and entrepreneurial activities,
Route 66,
in its early years,
was also
frequently the road taken
by the uprooted and displaced.
In 1929,
the stock market crashed,
starting a worldwide
economic crisis.
In the Midwest,
the Great Depression,
combined with drought
and dust storm,
forced 350,000 people to leave
their homes and land behind.
(announcer)
For Highway 66,
their path of exodus,
across mountains and desert
to the green promised land,
California.
(soft music)
(Lyndia)
Amarillo was the largest city
in the area
that became the Dust Bowl.
The surrounding area
was farmers.
During the 1920s,
this was the first time
that mechanized farm equipment
began to be used
in the Midwest.
By 1930 and 1931,
everything was constantly
covered in dust,
including most of the goods
in the fur store,
so they had to be kept
in cloth bags
to keep the dust off.
Mother was Sarah, with an H,
Finegold Rubenstein.
It says
"Amarillo, Texas, 1932.
I'm five feet tall
and weigh 100 pounds."
I love that.
Natural gas was discovered
in Amarillo in the 1920s.
It was a wonderful place
to open a luxury store.
The mistresses
of the oil workers
would come in to buy jewelry
and a fur coat.
And my grandfather's store
was on the main road,
downtown Route 66,
Polk Street,
named for the President.
This was the road
that people took
as they were going
to California.
It was such hard work.
She was in the store
seven days a week.
She was dealing with people
who didn't have very much money,
so that was layaway.
During the summer,
she would store fur coats,
so when the fall came
and it was cold again,
she would sell off the coats
that had been left
without any money.
(narrator)
For self-supporting
creative women
like Sally Rand
and Dorothea Lange,
life was hard,
but they found new ways
to support themselves
on Route 66 that shaped
their lives and legacies.
Rand had tasted success
as an actor
working for Cecil B. DeMille.
But with the advent of talkies,
her career plummeted
alongside the stock market.
She found herself
without work
and headed back home
to the Midwest,
where she launched
her burlesque act
at the Chicago World's Fair
in 1933.
Despite frequent arrests
for indecency,
Rand performed
her legendary fan dance
an estimated 65,000 times.
Lange, on the other hand,
took a job documenting
the plight of migrants
on Route 66
and turned her camera,
in particular,
on the suffering and heroism
of women and girls.
John Steinbeck
looked at Lange's photos
when he was doing research
for his epic novel
The Grapes of Wrath,
published in 1939.
He called Route 66
"the mother road,
the road of flight."
After looking at Lange's photo
of Florence Thompson,
who was originally from
the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma,
near Route 66,
Steinbeck wrote Lange a letter.
"Thank you
for sending that picture.
Nothing was ever taken
that so illustrates the time."
Women who were breadwinners
found themselves taking jobs
and moving to places that,
under ordinary circumstances,
they would never
have considered.
(Joe)
Towns along Route 66
in the Mojave Desert,
the climate out there,
that's what
most people think of
when they think
of living out there.
It gets extremely hot,
and I mean 120,
115 in the summertime.
But the wintertimes
can be brutally cold.
Life for the families out there,
particularly the women
who lived in these communities,
was austere.
So their job
was cooking, cleaning,
and raising
all these children.
(soft music)
But teachers out there have
a special place in my heart.
They were very caring
and certainly had to be
resilient and resourceful.
When Nellie first arrived
in Chubbuck,
a small desert mining community,
I think she knew
what she was getting into.
She was highly educated,
but she couldn't find a job.
And I think most of the jobs
were being taken by men.
And they offered her this,
I think the salary was $100
a month or something like that.
She was recently widowed
before she came out there.
(soft music)
She lived in the school
in one room that was
adjacent to the school,
divided from the classroom
by a curtain,
with her two boys and a dog.
(narrator)
A high percentage
of the families
living in the desert communities
along Route 66
were Latinos
seeking refuge in the desert
from the mass deportations
of Mexican Americans
that occurred in the 1930s.
(Luz)
During the Depression,
it was very difficult.
We had a man from Prescott
come with a big truck
with food for the poor people.
Well, Augustine and I
went and just--
we lived not too far
from the store
where the truck was.
He rubbed his little hands
together and said,
"Come on, Luz,
let's go get some food.
We're gonna surprise Mom
and take her some ham."
Well, he got up to the truck,
he's just a little boy,
I think about ten,
nine, ten years old.
And he got up to the truck
and he put his little hands up
to get a piece--
to get a piece of ham.
The man said, "You're Mexican,
I can't give you any food."
(somber music)
Augustine and I
were so sorry
that we couldn't take Mother
a piece of ham.
(jazz music)
We went--we walked home,
just very, very sad.
But we had other things
that topped that.
The Delgadillo Dance Band
was well-known.
Smoke and we
were very dedicated.
And we produced good music.
Dance music.
(laughing)
My brother, Juan,
started a band in the '30s
in (inaudible).
I come from a family of 11.
And he took all the younger
brothers and sisters
and taught us music.
He was with a band in Ash Fork,
playing with Hank Bedcur.
And he'd take me with him,
and he said,
"Luz, I just want you
to watch the piano player
and don't move and watch him."
And I said, "Watch what?"
He said, "Watch his hands.
See what he does
with his hands."
So, for all the rehearsal hours,
I watched Mr. Bedcur's hands.
♪
The house I grew up on
was on the original Route 66.
Practiced in the living room,
and in that living room,
you could hear the sound
of a bunch of kids.
Charles was the manager.
He'd come in and say,
"You know what?
There's a bunch of cars
listening to your music."
We played for prom dances,
graduation.
Any activity, anything
that went on in Seligman,
Ash Fort, Williams, Flagstaff,
Prescott, Winslow.
And we traveled all Route 66
in an old Dodge car.
And we were never late
to a dancing gag,
we were never late.
Set up before nine,
be ready to play the first tune,
the first notes at nine,
and we'll take 15-minute break
about 11,
and then get back
on the dancefloor,
on the stage,
and play till one.
Well, sometimes we didn't get
home till 3:00 in the morning.
Well, my dear mother
never went to sleep.
She'd meet us to the back door
of the kitchen and just say:
"Ah, gracias a Dios llegaron."
She'd say,
"Thank God you're here."
Didn't know it then,
we knew after what we had done,
we didn't know we were
getting over those barriers,
we didn't realize that.
We were too busy entertaining.
(narrator)
For many travelers on Route 66
who were California bound,
out of necessity
or for pleasure,
a rest stop
after crossing the high desert
was a much-needed relief.
The city of San Bernardino
was the entry-point
into the Los Angeles Basin.
And Route 66 created
a thriving environment
-for business.
-My name is Irene Montaño,
and I'm the daughter-in-law
of Lucia Rodriguez,
who was the original owner
of Mitla Cafe.
Lucia didn't have
a formal education.
She came from Mexico
with her husband,
she had her children,
she didn't speak English,
but she could tally up
totals of math in her head
like nobody's business.
Her husband was working
at Santa Fe at the railroad,
and she started the Mitla.
She was here at 4:00
in the morning working.
I think--and I think
at that time
they were open 24 hours a day.
Route 66 really propelled
this already growing
and developing
Mexican community
and made it
a much more diverse community
in that it allowed
Mexican Americans
to become merchants.
(Patti)
My grandmother
was a very strong lady,
and because she knew
what it was
to go without food
for several days,
that she didn't want her
children going through that.
And, therefore,
she was gonna open a restaurant
and make sure
that the kids were fed
whenever they wanted to eat.
(jazz music)
♪
She brought her daughters
to work with her,
and to help her,
so it was all women.
And my mother, Vera,
only had
an eighth grade education,
but she, I think, followed
in my grandmother's footsteps,
where she was an entrepreneur,
she knew how to run
the business,
she knew books,
she knew money,
she--and she was
very, very good at it.
(Mark)
San Bernardino was typical
of other Southwestern
communities at the time.
There was segregation within
schools for Mexican children,
segregation within
public recreational spaces.
The Mitla Cafe promoted
community identity,
especially one
that was Mexican,
one that was ethnic,
one that was instilling pride
into the residents
of these neighborhoods.
Not only that, it was also
an inter-ethnic space
in that white patrons
were coming in
and introducing themselves
to Mexican culture,
Mexican food,
and Mexican people as well.
So, it was this space
that challenged
segregationist practices.
(Irene)
In the 1950s,
Glen Bell had a local stand
across the street from here,
and he used to come in
and have tacos.
And he--he really liked 'em
and he wanted to know
how they were made.
So my father-in-law
accommodated him
-and took him in the back.
-When I started working,
I would see him
come in for breakfast
before he went
to his little hot dog stand.
Lucia,
she taught you how to do it
and she expected you to do it
the way she taught you.
That's the right way to do it.
So, a little after that,
he moved away from there.
He sold
his little hot dog stand
and he went to start
his Taco Bell empire,
I guess you'd call it.
The automobile
opened up worlds for women.
It's been dubbed "automobility,"
and it's allowed women
to break out
of their traditional roles.
(John)
Darlene was a woman
from my hometown.
And she wanted
to go to college,
and her father just
didn't think, in 1930,
that a girl needed
to go to college.
And so he made her
a counteroffer
that if she would go
to beauty school
and stay at home,
he would pay for beauty school
and he would buy her a car.
Darlene began
to invite friends
to go on summer vacations
with her.
Over the period of nine years,
there were
20 different young women,
all single,
who ended up
going on the vacation.
Gypsy Coed became a name
that they adopted
in about 1940, '41,
and it stuck with them
for the rest of the time.
The top on the car
had been destroyed
and they went
to an awning shop
and bought awning remnants,
and they stitched them together
to make the top of the car.
So when they put
the top of the car up,
they looked at it
and they said,
"This kind of looks
like a gypsy wagon."
(Kaisa)
So how did they meet Henry Ford?
(John)
Well, the girls were camping
in Wisconsin and Devil's Lake.
Some of the boys that
were camping next to them
looked at the Silver Streak,
and they said,
"This coming weekend,
they're having
a big 75th birthday party
for Henry
in Dearborn, Michigan."
And Darlene called
all the girls together
at the campfire
that night and said,
"We're breaking camp
in the morning.
We're gonna go to Detroit
and we're gonna wish
Henry Ford a happy birthday."
And I think
when the girls came--
pulled up at his front door
in this vehicle,
it just gave him
a lot of satisfaction.
"You know,
that old Model T of mine,
it really keeps running."
(Kaisa)
That 1940 trip was a trip
from Illinois to California
-on Route 66.
-That's right. Yes, it was.
They got on Route 66
at Bloomington, Illinois,
and they actually got off
at Amarillo
to go down to Carlsbad Cavern.
They stayed in
country schoolyards
and country churchyards,
because, typically,
they had an outdoor pump
and they had outhouses.
(Kaisa)
Now, traveling
at 35 miles per hour,
how long did it take them?
(John)
The diary that was kept
said six and a half weeks
or 13 flat tires,
whichever way
you wanted to count.
On many of the trips,
there were six girls.
Now look around here
and tell me how six girls
got in this car with
their suitcases on the side.
It's a very basic car,
rudimentary, I like to say.
(car door opens)
(Kaisa)
All right. California bound?
(John laughs)
(engine starts)
(John)
When they got into Oklahoma,
they had a major engine problem
and they struggled with that
all the way to the West Coast.
And finally the car
quit altogether and--
75 miles outside
of San Francisco.
They had to get towed
into the city.
Ford came and got the car,
took it to their plant,
and overhauled it
while the girls
were at
the Golden Gate Exhibition.
-Is that right?
-Yeah.
-Let's go!
-Let's go.
It has a couple of horns.
(beeps horn)
(jaunty piano music)
♪
(narrator)
In the 1940s,
World War II and Route 66
opened up new opportunities
for women in the workplace.
(announcer)
They're holding down
man-size jobs
and handling those jobs
with comparable skills.
(piano music)
♪