Route 66 (TV Series) - Locations

Locations

Route 66 is well-remembered for its cinematography and location filming. Writer-producer Stirling Silliphant traveled the country with a location manager (Sam Manners), scouting a wide range of locales and writing scripts to match the settings. The actors and film crew would arrive a few months later. Memorable locations include a logging camp, shrimp boats, an offshore oil rig, and Glen Canyon Dam, the latter while still under construction.

The show had little connection with the U.S. Highway providing its name. Most of the locations in the series were far from "The Mother Road", which passed through eight states. The series took place throughout the lower 48 US states, and two episodes took place in Canada. U.S. Route 66 the highway was briefly referred to in just three early episodes of the series ("Black November," "Play It Glissando," and "An Absence of Tears") and is rarely shown, as in the early first season episode "The Strengthening Angels".

Route 66 is one of few series in the history of TV to be filmed entirely on the road. This was done at a time when the United States was much less homogeneous than it is now. People, their accents, livelihoods, ethnic backgrounds and attitudes varied widely from one location to the next. Scripted characters reflected a far less mobile, provincial society, in which people were more apt to spend their entire lives in one part of the country. Obviously there were no regional barrier breakers like today's Internet, satellite/cable TV or national talk radio. Similarly, the places themselves were very different from one another visually, environmentally, architecturally, in goods and services available, etc. Stars Martin Milner and George Maharis mentioned this in 1980s interviews. "Now you can go wherever you want," Maharis added by way of contrast, "and it's a Denny's."