Course Description

NOTE: Students are required to register for both Route 66 courses—one with Dr. Moore and one with Dr. Lovata—for a total of 6 credits.

If you ever plan to motor West,
Travel my way, take the highway that is best,
Get your kicks on Route Sixty-Six.

-Bobby Troup

Route 66 was designated in 1926 as one of the original pieces of the US Highway System. It deeply affected how people traveled, how they settled on the land, and how they viewed the world around them. It stretched over 2,400 miles from Chicago, Illinois to California's Santa Monica Pier before it was officially decommissioned in 1985. Yet this was neither the beginning nor the end of the flow of humanity down this iconic corridor. Route 66 follows the course of the Santa Fe Railroad, which traced the route of the camel-surveyed Beale Wagon Road, which intersects with and parallels both the Spanish-era Camino Real from Mexico City to Santa Fe and the Zuni-Hopi trail that Coronado followed in search of the Seven Cities of Gold. Even after it was decommissioned, the road did not die. Portions of the route and sites along the way have been designated National Historic Sites, thousands continue to visit and travel the road each year, and the idea of the American Road continues to shape people's consciousness. Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck, in his novel The Grapes of Wrath, christened it the “Mother Road” and Route 66 continues to provide insight into both historic and modern American life, culture, and landscape. Why has this swath of the North America drawn and fascinated travellers since the first humans settled the continent? In this course, we will follow in the footsteps, camel trails, railway tracks and tire treads of those generations past and try to understand the genesis and evolution of this corridor (reaching back millions of years) and how that interacts with our experiences of the Mother Road today.
This course is an interdisciplinary, experiential geological and archaeological study of land and place. We will study the road in general and in Albuquerque in particular in 6 weekly meetings during the first half of the semester. Then we will spend Spring Break 2023 traveling Route 66 through New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas in order to experience the life and land along the road first-hand. Students will travel to the Grand Canyon, Arizona the first weekend of Spring Break and then drive in vans back to Albuquerque along the historic road. After spending a night at home mid-week; they will start again in vans heading East to Santa Fe, Eastern New Mexico, and West Texas. Following Spring Break students will prepare and publicly present research projects on their travels.

Texts

Required readings include Michael Wallis’ book Route 66: The Mother Road, copies of various research articles, and various websites chronicling the history, geology, and archaeology of the region.

Requirements

There is a required $650 course fee that covers transportation (primarily vans), lodging (we will be staying at historic hotels and motels as well camping at three National Parks/Monuments along the road), some entrance fees at sites visited, and some meals. During the course students will complete a pre-travel research paper, fill a workbook while traveling, and present on a final research topic after spring break.

About the Instructor(s): Troy Lovata , Jason Moore

Troy Lovata, Ph.D. is a Professor in the UNM Honors College and Research Faculty in UNM’s Southwest Hispanic Research Institute, where he has taught courses on landscape, culture, and place for more than a fifteen years. Trained as an Anthropologist and Archaeologist, Troy is especially interested in how people from prehistory through the present conceive of and mark their environment and the paths people etch on the land.