In 1921, the American congress decided to start a new program, meant to upgrade the actual roads, making each state designate primary roads to be included in the U.S highways.

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Cyrus Avery, considered to be the father of Route 66, was one of the promoters of a new highway system in the country. The urge for a change in this system was caused by a lack of a standardized system of highway symbols and colors and the must of standardized maps, which could be totally different one from another and show different kind of roads depending on where you bought them.

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Cyrus and others set up:

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-A systematic numbering plan that would take over the old way of naming roads. In this new system, a North to South road would be assigned an odd number, it would start with 1 on the east and end with 91 in the West.  East to West highways would be even, starting with 2 in the north and ending with the number in the South. The highways that crossed the whole country would be multiples of 10.

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-A system to take care of the roads, so they would have a good maintenance. 

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-A system of warning and regular signs that would be common all over the country.

 

Route 66 was shaped in a diagonal way, linking a large portion of land where farmers were settled such as Illinois, Kansas and Missouri. This enabled producers to be able to trade easily.

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