Parts of fabled road to be taken to Washington for transportation exhibit

TULSA, Okla. (AP) -- Parts of Route 66 will hit the road next week, headed for a transportation exhibit scheduled to open in by 2004 at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

Instructors from Central Tech's transportation and safety education program in Drumright have agreed to load parts of the fabled road onto trucks headed to Washington, D.C., said Robert McClanahan, the director of the program.

The Oklahoma Department of Transportation is widening to four lanes a stretch of road southeast of Geary that was the original paved route for Route 66, said Lu Richardson, an Oklahoma Department of Transportation spokeswoman.

"The contractor has selected a section to be preserved and set aside," Richardson told the Tulsa World's capitol bureau on Wednesday.

The Oklahoma Trucking Association put out a call for drivers earlier this week, said George Tomek, the association's executive director. McClanahan has been the only one to have responded, Tomek said.

"I think it is a neat deal," McClanahan said. "We are going to be transporting about 50 feet of what they are going to cut from the old highway."

Two trucks will pick up the slabs next week, he said. Each slab measures 8 feet by 11 feet, is 8.5 inches thick and weighs about 9,300 pounds.

The drivers will begin their 1,400-mile trek Dec. 13 to a Smithsonian warehouse in Maryland, McClanahan said.

"We have to be careful with all of this," he said. "It is now sitting on ground, the slabs of concrete. Once we load it on a trailer, it will be part of American history."

Route 66 was dedicated on Nov. 11, 1926. The historic 2,440-mile road linked Chicago to Santa Monica, Calif. It crossed eight states and three time zones, said Michael Wallis, the author of "Route 66: The Mother Road."

"We have almost 400 miles of it, more than any other state,"

he said.

Wallis had mixed feelings about having portions of Route 66 in Washington.

"If there are abandoned sections, that is fine," he said. "In that way, the road lives on. You are bringing Route 66 to the greater public."

What Route 66 fans, who call themselves "road warriors," don't want is the current alignment to be tampered with, he said.

The Smithsonian's planned exhibit will focus on transportation's impact on the United States from the 1870s to 2000.

The goal is to include a section of Route 66 in the exhibit on the development of the U.S. automotive transportation system.