(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.

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