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[{"type":"text","text":"When faced with a steep staircase, it's important to exercise caution...."}]

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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Smile: Sunday, February 18, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

When faced with a steep staircase, it's important to exercise caution....

Daily Smile: Sunday, February 18, 2024

 When faced with a steep staircase, it's important to exercise caution....

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

He was a strategist and leader at the July 26, 1865, Battle of Platte Bridge when a young lieutenant named Caspar Collins was killed by Native warriors.

A fort and city went on to be named after the fallen soldier. 

But after the campaign from 1866-1868 to stop settlement and incursion into tribal lands in central Wyoming, Red Cloud had a war, Indian agency, town, tobacco brand, mountain in Colorado, comic book villain and more named for him.

Jeffrey Means, University of Wyoming Department of History chair and an expert on Great Plains Indian culture, told Cowboy State Daily that Red Cloud definitely ranks near the top of significant Native American leaders.

“He’s on the top of the Lakota Mount Rushmore for sure,” he said. “His legacy of just being that guy that’s always trying to make things better for his people translated into having schools named after him and even a town. These kinds of things are part of that respect.”

However, when Red Cloud returned to Casper about 30 years after his famous win at Platte Bridge and the Red Buttes, he was no longer a conqueror but under escort from lawmen and facing potential jail time for illegally taking game out of season.

Means said the incident in 1894 is interesting because at that point in Red Cloud’s life he was going blind.

“Him out on a hunting trip is pretty amazing,” he said. “Maybe he was just there to get off the reservation because he didn’t like it there.”

An article in the Argus-Leader newspaper in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on June 2, 1894, reported that Red Cloud, then 68, and 50 others had stopped in Oelrichs, South Dakota, to trade with merchants before heading west into Wyoming for the Shoshone Reservation.

“They plan to go on a hunting expedition,” the newspaper reported.

When the group rode into Natrona County, reports that they were illegally taking game out of season filtered into town.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Arrest"}]

Alfred James Mokler, publisher of the Natrona County Tribune from June 1897 to October 1914, wrote in his history of Natrona County published in 1923 that the chief was broken in health.

He also noted that Natrona County and Casper residents “decided” Indians needed to comply with the same laws as everyone else and that the “wholesale slaughter” of game needed to stop. 

Mokler’s account states the chief and his band were camped about 30 miles west of the city in the Pine Mountains. On June 10, a Natrona County Sheriff’s deputy and Casper town marshal were sent with warrants to arrest Red Cloud, his son Jack Red Cloud, and Dreaming Bear for killing game out of season.

“When the authorities came upon them, the Indians had broken camp and all of them except the big chief and his son were traveling in a westerly direction,” Mokler wrote. “There was an abundance of antelope meat and pelts in the chief’s wagon.”

The chief, his son and Dreaming Bear were shown the warrants and the Natives on the road were signalled to return and soon everyone was back in camp. Red Cloud and the others agreed to return to Casper but only if they could bring their guns.

Mokler’s account states that the trio spent the rest of the weekend in jail while Red Cloud’s wife sat outside mourning and armed Natives went through town scowling. 

At a hearing Monday morning, the prosecuting attorney argued for a conviction and heavy fines. The Indians countered they did not know the law, were without food and hungry.

Both Mockler and a man who visited the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in July 1894, who likely heard about it from accounts of Natives, concur on what happened next.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Fines And Freedom"}]

Mockler wrote that the three men were fined $20 each by the judge. But given Red Cloud’s status and promise they would not kill any more game, they were let go without having to pay. The group then went to the Wind River Indian Reservation and, after the visit, came back through Casper and had again killed game along the way.

The three were arrested again and brought before the judge for trial. After initially refusing to pay the fine and with some of the Indians “making dire threats against the people of the town,” they asked the sheriff if he would take Red Cloud’s team, wagon and harness in exchange for the fines.

Mockler wrote that the sheriff agreed and made a bill of sale. The Natives returned to Pine Ridge.

In a story published in the Kansas City Weekly Journal on July 26, 1894, Charles A. Finlay was quoted as visiting Pine Ridge when the annual allotment of $100,000 was being distributed to the tribes. He reported Red Cloud “got into a little trouble.”

“It seems that he and his son have insisted from time to time on invading Wyoming and killing game there,” he wrote.

Several other newspapers also had stories on Red Cloud’s arrest and fines. The Sioux chief’s notoriety from Red Cloud’s War had not faded. 

During that war the chief led efforts focused on preventing travel on the Bozeman Trail and white settlement in the Powder River area of Wyoming and southeast Montana. The Natives’ victory in the Fetterman Fight against troops from Fort Phil Kearny near what is now Sheridan in December 1866 claimed 81 soldiers’ lives.

Red Cloud’s efforts leading the Lakota, Cheyenne and Northern Arapaho resistance forced the U.S. back to a negotiation table at the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 and the removal of forts from the Powder River area. Native control of the region held until the wars of 1876 at Rosebud and Little Big Horn.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Promise Made"}]

Means said what is not as well known is that Red Cloud kept his word that he would never take up a weapon against the U.S. again. He made that promise during negotiations for the Great Sioux Reservation that occurred at Fort Laramie in 1868.

“His method of fighting from then on was taking trips to Washington to talk with Congress or the president, or the secretary of the interior about conditions on the reservation and what the nation needed for supplies,” he said.

In 1895, Red Cloud’s influence in Washington apparently had its impact. A story in the Cheyenne Daily-Sun Leader on Nov. 26 reported that Wyoming Gov. William Richards received communication from a Col. George, who was an attorney in Washington, requesting the state return the fines and costs paid by Red Cloud and others in Casper after their arrests the previous year.

The request was made due to a court decision in another case involving a Bannock native named Race Horse who took an elk. A judge ruled that the Indians had the right to hunt game. 

The governor replied that the case cited by George was under appeal “and that his request could not at present be considered.”

The case ultimately went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that states had the authority to regulate hunting.

Red Cloud’s promise not to fight also meant he did not take part in the Battle of Rosebud or at Custer’s Last Stand, Means said. But one thing he advocated for was to put cattle on the Great Sioux Reservation, which would allow the Sioux to maintain their lifestyle similar to the years they enjoyed before bison were killed off by the whites.

“A lot of Native leaders wanted to do this,” Means said. “They wanted to harvest cattle, just like they harvested bison … that way they could maintain their cultural structure, their political, social, and economic structure."

Means said the U.S. government was not interested in allowing that to happen.

The chief was one of the last of the Lakota to accept his allotment of acreage that came out of the Sioux bill of 1889, which broke apart the Great Sioux Reservation and took away 11 million acres. It was then that the smaller reservations were established, including Pine Ridge where Red Cloud lived.

“He fought that for a long, long time,” Means said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Spokesman For His People"}]

The historian said that during the early 1890s Red Cloud never became a proponent or advocate for the ghost dance. 

However, after the Battle of Wounded Knee, newspapers quoted the chief as advocating for change in the federal government’s Indian department.

“Red Cloud blames the Indian troubles largely on the Indian department,” the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal reported on Jan. 11, 1891. “Red Cloud gives us to understand that these agents and officers of various grades are looking out for themselves well, making no end of money and letting the Indians starve.”

As he aged, Red Cloud continued to advocate for his people, and though he and his wife lived alone he was surrounded by family and other Natives would seek him out and he was invited to events off the reservation.

“Oftentimes what he did is he had his grandchildren help him,” Means said. “They would hold his hand and lead him around because he really couldn’t see as he got older.”

In 1903, newspapers across the country had stories predicting the chief’s death was near and that he was in a teepee. But the chief rallied and went on to live six more years.

At his death on Dec. 10, 1909, the Omaha (Neb.) Daily Bee published a story Dec. 14 from the Pine Ridge Agency that quoted a Col. William McCune, who reportedly knew the chief for many years and characterized him as the “greatest Indian of the 19th century.”

“We all loved him and none more so than Colonel Cody, ‘Buffalo Bill,’ who knew him most intimately. It was always the pleasure and desire of Colonel Cody to present Red Cloud with some substantial remembrance twice a year,” McCune said. “And that duty was entrusted to me. The old chief was grateful for it, because he was a poor man.”

Red Cloud and Mule deer 7 12 26

<title>Wyoming History: Chief Red Cloud Was Locked Up In Casper For Killing Wild Game | Cowboy State Daily</title>

In 1894, Chief Red Cloud and a band of 50 Indians came through Natrona County on the way to the Wind River Indian Reservation and killed some wild game for food. He was arrested and spent time in a Casper jail while his wife mourned outside.

Wyoming History: Chief Red Cloud Was Locked Up In Casper For Killing Wild Game

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

It’s often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but it’s worth more than that at the Bone Daddy Outlaw Bar and Grill in Dubois, which has undergone a dramatic transformation since it was purchased last year by Ben Barto and his wife, Sherry.

Hanging in one corner of the bar is a picture that says it all, even if few might guess at all the layers of meaning it holds for its owner.

It is a photo of motorcycle handlebars looking out at a scenic vista. The words say simply, “Life Behind Bars.”

“I was in junior high when I had my first motorcycle,” Barto told Cowboy State Daily. “And I had a neighbor with a faster motorcycle. He always used to brag about how he would outrun the cops when he was speeding.”

The brag turned out to be just that — as Barto soon discovered.

“We were riding together one time and we decided we were going to take off and see who was faster,” he said. “No sooner did we get started than there was a highway patrolman coming at us.”

The patrolman flipped his lights on, and the neighbor who loved to brag about outrunning the law meekly pulled over to the side. 

Barto, who’d never made such a claim, kept right on going.

“So the cop chased me for a while, and I couldn’t take a corner very well,” he recalled. “I had to lay the bike over and he caught up to me.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"'He Was A Friend Of Mine'"}]

Barto knew this was bad in every possible way, but he didn’t know just how bad until he got a look at the officer’s face.

“He was a friend of mine,” Barto admitted.

It was a friend who was shocked to see just who he’d been chasing.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It grew worse as the night went on."}]

“My uncle, who also happened to be a policeman and lived right across the street from me, was at the jailhouse that night,” Barto said. “And my folks were on vacation.”

While his uncle was disappointed in Barto, he decided not to throw the youth in jail, saying he knew his dad too well. He knew what would happen to Barto when his father found out his son had been arrested.

“He did issue me a ticket,” Barto said.

When Barto’s dad did come home, it didn’t take him long to hear through the grapevine what his son had been up to while he was away. 

“He took me to the jail and had my uncle take me downstairs to the jail,” Barto said. “He had me put in the jail and shut the door.”

For a moment, all was silent but for the echoing clang of the heavy door closing.

Then his uncle said words Barto has never forgotten.

“The way you’re going, you’re going to spend a lot of time behind bars,” he told him. 

And then he left Barto there to think it over for a while.

Barto decided then the only bars he ever wanted to live behind were the right kind — his motorcycle bars or, in this case, the bar he’s purchased in Dubois and is restoring. 

The photo is his reminder every day that he chooses the life he wants to live. That includes staying away from the wrong kinds of bars. 

“I haven’t outrun any cops since then,” Barto said with a chuckle.

Decades after that lesson in “life behind bars,” Barto has traded the threat of steel jail doors for steel blades married to custom-carved antler bone handles — a business he calls Bone Daddy Knives. 

The business has quietly been putting Dubois on the map for almost three decades, starting with a contract he picked up after a Montana gift rep died, leaving a shopkeeper with a demand and no knives.

Today, 2 miles inside the Wind River Indian Reservation, Barto buys about 25,000 pounds of antlers a year from local “shed heads,” or antler hunters. The best of the pieces become Bone Daddy knife handles, while the rest become part of the booming antler dog-chew trade.

He and his small crew turn out a couple thousand knives a year, each one a custom job, which sell well across the West.

Barto also at one time carved ornaments from bone antlers, as well as hat pins and figurines, which were sold at gift shops in Yellowstone National Park, Gardiner, West Yellowstone, Sturgis, as well as to larger chains such as Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shops.

Barto jokes, like a lot of craftsmen, that making knives was something he once liked — back when it was still a hobby.

“Now it’s a business,” he said with a chuckle. “But when you’ve got a business that provides you the funds necessary to keep going in whatever adventure you want to go off into, I guess you still have to keep doing it.”

It’s all about the kind of bars Barto wants to live behind.

The knife business is bankrolling his transformation of the Outlaw Bar from a dive — where 

 in Cowboy State Daily noted people might be concerned for their safety — to an establishment where the opposite is true.

When he and Sherry bought the bar it was, to say the least, not exactly turnkey.

“This was just a dump when we bought it,” Barto said. “But they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

Barto could immediately see the potential. His wife took a little more sweet-talking.

“She was going crazy,” Barto admitted. “She’s like, ‘At your age, you want to start another project?!’”

Barto took it slow. He’d take his wife to the bar now and again for drinks. And just about every time the occasion presented just the right moment to say something like, “Oh look dear, you know what we could do with this part of the building?” Or, “Could you imagine if we did this in this room?”

Barto held up the mirror often enough that his wife finally gave in and said, “Yeah, let’s go ahead and do it.”

The bar’s biggest potential, he realized, wasn’t just what he could do with an artist’s eye and aesthetic inside. It was its position on a main highway to Yellowstone and the Tetons, a high-traffic strip where lots of tourists, sportsmen and bikers are roaring through town looking for their next adventure.

Its other big advantage is a deep lot, stretching far enough behind the bar to create a parking lot. 

“There is no parking anywhere else in town,” Barto said. “All of the Outlaw’s customers have been complaining about it for years.”

So Barto started his work in the back of the bar, carving out what he hopes will become a signature beer garden and games yard, with expanded parking, turf, fencing and, eventually, a raised stage for large outdoor events.

“We still have room to go back another 100 feet and still have a space for a possible stage up on top for a big venue,” he said. 

Inside, the transformation is further along, and personal. 

He’s hung up some of his and his wife’s work, tracing the arc of their lives from the early Bartolo Collectibles days to the present Bone Daddy Knife days, as well as wildlife mounts from hunting trips and, of course, the poster that captures his life’s motto to live his life behind only the bars he chooses.

There is still much dirt yet to move and asphalt to pour, but Barto is already thinking big for this bar, five to 10 years down the road.

“We want to be the best cowboy biker sportsman bar in Wyoming,” he said. “And from what we’ve been hearing from all of the locals lately, this new makeover has created a vibe all its own. That’s what they’re calling it. They say this place has vibe now.”

The “vibe” was on full display during the Fourth of July weekend, Barto added, when the bar hosted the band Second Ride. 

“I have never seen the bar that busy in my entire life,” he said. “It was standing-room-only Friday night.”

During Dubois’ famous tank parade, announcers even gave Barto a shoutout for cleaning up and reinventing the bar.

Barto is clear that, aside from aesthetics, he’s also made it a priority to clear out questionable clientele.

On his first night as an owner, he spotted a drug dealer working the room and said he “86’d” her on the spot. 

“My main focus, other than cleaning that bar up, was cleaning up the reputation,” he said. “If there was somebody in there who was always raising hell, we 86’d them.”

Signs at every entrance now warn potential troublemakers that a new sheriff owns the bar. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bone Daddy Needed A Bar"}]

If Bone Daddy Knives is the financial engine behind the bar, the Bone Daddy persona is its soul.

It was developed over a 20-some year period, when Barto served as mascot for the Beartooth Rally’s Iron Horse Rodeo in Red Lodge, Montana.

At first, his costume was simple: The widest brim black cowboy hat he could find and a mask. The next year he added an air-brushed skeleton T-shirt and pants. 

Of course, then, cool costume and all, Bone Daddy needed a more appropriate ride.

The $65,000 custom bike he built includes his own screaming Bone Daddy moon logo as well as other artwork. 

“That was quite the undertaking,” he admitted. “But it is a masterpiece of artwork.”

When Barto retired from the Ironhorse Circuit after a couple of decades, he brought his Bone Daddy logo with him. The rearing motorcycle with its cowboy skeletal rider happened to be an almost-perfect match for the rearing horse logo at the Outlaw, a similarity that wasn’t lost on Barto.

“So I just added Bone Daddy to the back of the horse,” he said. “That’s all I did to change their logo.”

Barto, in addition to all the other hats he wears, is also president of the Professional Biker Rodeo Association, which he plans to start revving up next year as he’s completing renovations.

“Bone Daddy had to have a bar,” he said with a chuckle. “Now the trick is to make it the kind of place people remember for the right reasons.”

Bone Daddy Outlaw Saloon 7 12 26

<title>Longtime Knifemaker Transforming Dubois' Outlaw Bar From Dive Into Destination | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Dubois craftsman Ben Barto owns Bone Daddy Knives, a hobby turned big business that’s now bankrolling a transformation of Dubois' Outlaw Bar and giving the once-seedy watering hole a new vibe. “This was just a dump when we bought it,” Barto said.

Longtime Knifemaker Transforming Dubois' Outlaw Bar From Dive Into Destination

Tourism

On a cold winter’s night in the 1950s, a young Marine named Wayne Schell found himself in a desperate scramble under the hood of his 1950 Oldsmobile on a lonely stretch of Route 66. 

A tiny pinhole had developed in the radiator, and Schell was trying to figure out how to fix it so he could get home — without forking over his hard-earned money for a motel room.

“When you’re a young Marine, you can’t really afford a motel or anything,” Schell said with a chuckle. “You drive nonstop.”

The Marine riding with him to share expenses came up with a bright idea. Or so it seemed at 1 a.m.

“Well, maybe I can put this pencil tip in it to block it,” Schell recalled him saying. 

But the radiator was so rotten, the pencil just busted open an even larger hole.

The road trip home was over. At least for that night. 

Schell and his riding buddy had no choice but to rent a motel room for the night, one of the only times he would ever stay in a motel room along Route 66 back when it was an actual American highway. 

Schell, who is 90 — almost as old as the 100-year-old highway itself — recalls sharing the motel room with a significantly chastened pal. 

“I wasn’t mad at him,” Schell said in a soft voice, memories crowding in. “He tried to help me, and it just didn’t work out.”

The next morning, the two Marines found a radiator shop to fix the problem.

“He wouldn’t guarantee the work because we were out of town,” Schell said. “And he charged me like $20.”

It was half a week’s pay for the average male worker at the time. A small fortune — especially for work that had no guarantee.

“But I ended up using it for three more years,” Schell added. “So it worked. I got through. I made it home.”

The memory is just one in a million that Schell has of driving America’s Mother Road, Route 66, a name synonymous with America and legendary road trips. 

Schell, who joined the Marine Corps in 1956, is among the dwindling number of Americans alive today who has driven the entirety of Route 66 from Navy Pier in Chicago to Santa Monica Pier in California, a roughly 2,400-mile trip. 

He didn’t just drive it once, either. It was a regular trip home for the young Marine. 

“I lived in Illinois, about 100 miles southwest of Chicago,” he said. “I went to bootcamp in California, and then got stationed at 29 Palms in California.”

He made the drive home as often as he could in a 1950 Olds with a 1956 Olds engine and three Stormberg 97 two-barrel carburetors, usually in one long 40- to 45-hour sleepless trip.

The thing he likes to remind people who have never driven the route when it was an actual highway is that there was no such thing as a freeway then.

“Route 66 went through every little town along the way,” he said. “You had to stop at stoplights and stop signs. There was traffic, which wasn’t bad then.”

Some towns had posted limits of 30 mph, too, and friendly police to remind those who weren’t paying attention to their speed. 

U.S. Route 66 doesn’t officially exist anymore. The federal government decertified it in 1985, a year after the last interstate highway bypass was completed in Williams, Arizona, wiping it off the map as a U.S. highway — at least on paper.

But that didn’t kill the route. The Mother Road lives on in the heart and the imagination, which has made it feel more alive than ever. 

“It’s a road for God’s sake,” Route 66 historian John Hinckley of Arizona told Cowboy State Daily. “But it literally has an international fan club. There are Route 66 associations in Japan, Germany, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Italy — and they organize events and publish books.”

A 2018 Route 66 Festival in Europe where Hinckley was invited to speak brought more than 20,000 people from 10 countries to celebrate America and its legendary Route 66.

“It has evolved to represent the quintessential American experience,” Hinckley said. “It truly is the entire American story made manifest. It’s in any chapter of our history — even our prehistory. You have villages in New Mexico along Route 66, like Laguna Pueblo, and the chapel there was built in 1699. The village is 100 years older than that.”

Portions of Route 66 were laid on top of the Santa Fe Trail and the Buell Wagon Road, Hinckley added. 

“The Buell Wagon Road was laid on top of a 1,000-year-old Native American trade route,” he said. “And then you have the world’s first electric vehicle museum being established on Route 66. So it’s the entire story of America, and the story of our immigrants is all peppered through Route 66.”

Hinckley has been traveling Route 66 since 1959 and has been watching its transformation with fascination ever since, including how it’s become woven into the fabric of American legend.

The story that illustrates this best to him is the conversation he had with a gentleman who had grown up behind the Iron Curtain listening to Radio Free America.

“He knew that song about getting your kicks on Route 66,” Hinckley said. “He grew up watching bootleg copies of Easy Rider. And he said the American road trip, specifically Route 66, came to symbolize freedom for his generation, like the Statue of Liberty did for a previous generation.”

Americans, meanwhile, are finding ways to live out their dreams on Route 66 all up and down the route — freedom of another kind.

For example, in Stroud, Oklahoma, a young couple has restored the old Skyliner Motel. Elsewhere, retirees have brought back neon-lit motor courts. Multi-generation cafes, founded by penniless immigrants, have family members who are keeping the dream alive that their grandfathers began. 

That’s made Route 66 into a kind of 2,400-mile, small-town neighborhood, Hinckley said. 

“It’s America’s longest small town,” he said. “It’s evolved into this linear community.”

On any given night, you can find yourself at a place like the Roadrunner Lodge in Tucumcari, New Mexico, roasting marshmallows around a fire pit with a couple from Germany and a traveler from Scotland who is playing “The Star Spangled Banner” on bagpipes. 

Hinckley once ran into a caravan of strangers who spontaneously decided to convoy together to the Midpoint Cafe in Adrian, Texas, for a slice of “ugly crust” pie, so named because the cafe’s legendary pastry chef, Joann Andrews, famously cared more about the rich flavor and flaky texture of her pies than making a perfect crimped edge.

Midpoint Cafe, meanwhile, gets its name because it is exactly 1,139 miles from Chicago and 1,139 miles from Santa Monica, which makes the cafe a must for the ultimate Route 66 experience.

“You find inspiration all along the route,” he said. “The magic is the people.”

Route 66 wasn’t the first coast-to-coast highway, although it’s frequently portrayed that way. That honor actually belongs to 

, which goes right through the middle of Wyoming.

“This is another challenge with Route 66,” Hinckley said. “As with Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, it’s become such a legend that separating fact from fiction is a real challenge.”

From its earliest days, Route 66 benefitted from what Hinckley calls the best press and publicity any road has ever had.

“Cyrus Avery was a pioneer in a lot of these early highways,” Hinckley said. “And he and a bunch of visionaries got together and created the U.S. Highway 66 Association. The idea was to petition and lobby to have the road paved from end to end, and to promote the road — a kind of quasi Chamber of Commerce.”

The group hit the ground running with their publicity campaign — literally. 

“There was a sports promoter trying to get backing for a transcontinental foot race,” Hinckley said. “So they jumped on board and said they’d sponsor it as long as he would agree to do it on Route 66.”

The purse for the 1928 race was $20,000, a phenomenal amount of money for the time. The average American family earned less than $1,500 per year. A purse of that size could purchase multiple homes outright. 

Runners from all over the world, from amateur to professional, came to vie for this huge Route 66 purse.

“A 19-year-old Cherokee boy from Oklahoma entered the race,” Hinckley said. “Total amateur from some little farming community. By the time they got to the end of Oklahoma, he was leading the pack and he eventually won the race.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It was a huge, international media frenzy."}]

There would be more smart media campaigns after that. The Highway 66 Association partnered with the Olympics, for example, to advertise Route 66 as the scenic way to get to the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles.

“Then you had the ‘Grapes of Wrath,’ and you had the song, ‘Get Your Kicks on Route 66,’ which has turned into one of the most recorded songs in history,” Hinckley said. "The 'I Love Lucy'television show even got in on the act with a four-part episode of Desi and Lucy going on a Route 66 trip with the Mertzes to California.

Finally, in 1960, came the “Route 66” television series starring Martin Milner and George Maharis as two young men traveling across the country in a Chevrolet Corvette. A heady list of guest stars included Robert Redford, Lon Chaney Jr., Boris Karloff, Robert Duvall, Walter Matthau and William Shatner, among dozens of others.

The series ended in 1964 after 116 episodes and two Primetime Emmy Award nominations.

Route 66 itself ultimately became a victim of the interstate highway system — I-10, I-15, I-40, I-44 and I-55 — which rendered it obsolete and diverted traffic from its businesses.

Schell might not have been a tourist when he was driving Route 66, but he made plenty of great memories along the way.

“My 1950s Oldsmobile was all fancied up,” he said with a chuckle. “You know, like a young kid does. I had been keeping this at my parents’ house in Illinois. So that first time, I flew back home on an airplane, but when I got off leave, I drove the Oldsmobile back to 29 Palms.”

The sights along the way were incredible to a “young kid” as Schell referred to himself. 

Historic U.S. Route 66 is America's longest small town — a 2,400-mile neighborhood that one historian calls the "quintessential American experience." 90-year-old Wayne Schell has driven the entire route dozens of times and continues to drive it today.

Daily Smile: Sunday, February 18, 2024

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