June 27: Route 66 officially disappears on this date in 1986

The trail that ran from Chicago to California was cut from America throughout the 1800s, by telegraph operators and Civil War battles and, in the southwest, by an Army expedition using camels to cross the desert along the 35th parallel. By the 1920s, smaller cities and towns urged the building of their own road to reach markets, and in 1927 Route 66 was born. By 1986, the last of the Mother Road had been bypassed by highways and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials decertified the road — but not the endless cultural references it had spawned, from John Steinbeck books to TV shows to its own anthem. Historical associations have preserved much of the road since; compare the time-lapse take below to the one about freeways to see how much the view changed: