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Journal of Travel Research
DOI: 10.1177/0047287507299572
2007; 45; 371Journal of Travel Research
Kellee Caton and Carla Almeida Santos
Heritage Tourism on Route 66: Deconstructing Nostalgia
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Heritage Tourism on Route 66:
Deconstructing Nostalgia
KELLEE CATON AND CARLA ALMEIDA SANTOS
reflection, active interviewing, narrative inquiry, and photo
elicitation to explore tourists' experiences of visiting a popular
American heritage site: the Route 66 National Historic
Corridor. The site is then used as a context for beginning to
evaluate the explanatory power of nostalgia theory, a theory
typically invoked to explain tourism at popular culture heritage
sites. Thus, this work contributes broadly to tourism
studies by placing an empirical study in conversation with
the heritage tourism literature, in order to begin to evaluate
the usefulness of a commonly cited theory to explain the
phenomenon of heritage tourism as it occurs "on the ground."
Additionally, it strives to initiate a more direct discussion
than has previously occurred in the literature regarding the
utility of nostalgia theory for explaining heritage tourists'
experiences, by offering both a conceptual and an empirical
critique of this theoretical position. Such a discussion is
important because nostalgia theory is a key element of current
patterns of reasoning in tourism studies, which have
been broadly critical of heritage tourism; if accepted unquestioningly,
such patterns of thinking may run the risk of
obscuring this phenomenon's value (Crang 1996).
THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
Heritage Tourism and Nostalgia
Extant work on heritage tourism has predominantly
focused on documenting its significance and economic
impact (Taylor, Fletcher, and Clabaugh 1993; Makens 1987),
creating typologies of heritage tourists (Chandler and
Costello 2002; Kerstetter, Confer, and Graefe 2001; Kerstetter,
Confer, and Bricker 1998), discerning motivations for visiting
heritage sites (Poria, Reichel, and Biran 2006; Pearce and
Lee 2005; Poria, Butler, and Airey 2004), generating advice
for practitioners regarding site development and service
Kellee Caton, a doctoral student in the Department of Recreation,
Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign
(kcaton@uiuc.edu), conducts research on the lived
experience of travel and its role in human development. Carla
Almeida Santos, assistant professor at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign (csantos@uiuc.edu), conducts research on the
politics of representation.
Journal of Travel Research, Vol. 45(4), May 2007, 371­386
DOI: 10.1177/0047287507299572
 2007 Sage Publications
Many scholars have criticized the phenomenon of heritage
tourism, arguing that it is driven by nostalgia, the
desire on the part of heritage tourists to relive a glorified,
misremembered version of the past; however, few studies
have examined the actual experiences of heritage tourists.
Employing a framework of heuristic inquiry, this study explores
nine tourists' experiences traveling along the Route
66 National Historic Corridor, using methodological techniques
of in-depth active interviewing, personal reflection,
narrative inquiry, and photo elicitation in order to begin to
evaluate the explanatory power of nostalgia theory in this
context. Study participants identified various meaningful
elements of their travel experiences, including historical
education, interaction with diverse landscapes, interaction
with hosts, and personal growth; however, their experiences
did not appear to be characterized by nostalgia, as it is conceptualized
in the tourism literature. The study thus emphasizes
the importance of considering tourists' interpretations
of their experiences when generating theory about tourism
phenomena.
Keywords: Route 66; nostalgia; heritage
INTRODUCTION
Heritage tourism, which can be defined as tourism that
engages with the cultural tradition of a particular location
(Kibby 2000), is an important and growing segment of
tourism worldwide (Ashworth 2000; Poria, Butler, and
Airey 2003; Richards 2000). Heritage tourism resources are
often considered to include tangible remains of the past
(e.g., artifacts), as well as culturally valued natural areas
(e.g., scenic landscapes) and intangible cultural assets (e.g.,
folk traditions) (Kerstetter, Confer, and Bricker 1998).
Whereas there has been much theoretical speculation about
tourist experiences (e.g., Cohen 1979, 1988; MacCannell
1976) and about the phenomenon of heritage tourism (e.g.,
Hewison 1987; Jewell and Crotts 2002; Kibby 2000), little
empirical research has focused specifically on the experience
of visiting heritage sites (Beeho and Prentice 1997;
Masberg and Silverman 1996) or has sought to link empirical
findings with theory. Thus, while many theories are purported
to be relevant to heritage tourism experiences, rarely
have they been explored in the context of actual heritage
tourism sites. Consequently, this study employs the
approach of heuristic inquiry, using methods of personal
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372 MAY 2007
provision (Apostolakis and Jaffry 2005; Wanhill 2000), and
exploring the politics of site production and representation
(Jeong and Santos 2004; Waitt 2000; Rudd and Davis 1998).
A considerably smaller body of research has focused on
understanding the experience of heritage tourism, and much
of this work has specifically emphasized the phenomenon of
personal heritage (or legacy) tourism (McCain and Ray
2003; Timothy 1997), exploring people's experiences at sites
they deem to be related to their own family history (Poria,
Reichel, and Biran 2006). Thus, despite emergent recognition
of the importance of the experiential component of the
heritage tourism phenomenon (Timothy and Boyd 2003), it
remains an understudied concept (Poria, Reichel, and Biran
2006; Masberg and Silverman 1996).
One theory that has received much attention in the literature,
especially in reference to sites of importance to popular
culture, centers on the notion of nostalgia. Davis (1973)
defines nostalgia as being distinctive from other subjective
states oriented to the past, such as remembrance and reminiscence,
because it is necessarily comparative and valueladen
and because it involves the filtering of memories.
Nostalgia involves juxtaposing particular constructions
of the past with particular constructions of the present, such
that the past is associated with positive affects, such as
"beauty, pleasure, joy, [and] satisfaction," while the present,
by comparison, is viewed as being "more bleak, grim,
wretched, ugly, deprivational, unfulfilling, [and] frightening,"
or, less dramatically, as simply less promising, engaging,
and inspiring than the present or imagined future (pp.
14­15). Thus, by definition, nostalgia is "a positively toned
evocation of a lived past in the context of some negative
feeling toward present or impending circumstance" (p. 18).
Scholars who view heritage tourism as being driven by nostalgia
use the term in Davis's sense, as a longing for a past
(constructed of only positive memories) evoked by discontent
or anxiety over present conditions (Dann 1994, p. 65;
Hewison 1987, p. 45). However, they extend nostalgia beyond
lived experience to include the phenomenon of longing
for a culturally remembered past that may have occurred
before one's birth and, hence, not have been experienced
personally.
Several scholars (e.g., Dann 1994; Hewison 1987) have
criticized the recent heritage tourism boom as being driven
by nostalgia. Addressing the heritage industry in Great
Britain, Hewison (1987) argued that the trend of dramatically
increasing preservation and visitation of heritage sites
is driven by widespread anxiety on the part of the British
people that their country and culture are in decline. Dissatisfaction
with the present leads people to indulge in nostalgia
by visiting heritage sites, which present them not with
representations of the "true past," but with "fantasies of a
world that never was" (p. 10). Dann (1994) also attributes
much of heritage tourism's popularity to nostalgia. He
argues that tourism advertising capitalizes upon people's
"dissatisfaction with current social arrangements and concern
over their continuation into the future" by using nostalgic
text and images to sell destinations (p. 65). People then
visit the advertised attractions, which provide them with
"what they want to see"--a glorified representation of the
past, in which negative historical elements are either missing
or stripped of their potency (Dann 1996, p. 220).
Dann (1994) is not alone in implicating destination promotion
as a driving force behind the "nostalgiazation" of the
heritage tourism experience (Vesey and Dimanche 2003,
p. 54). Vesey and Dimanche (2003) argue that "destination
image has become central to many tourism locales and historical
tourism [uses] nostalgic images to attract those who
seek out history for entertainment and leisure" (p. 54). They
situate destination promotion within a larger framework of
place commodification, in which historic places and events
are translated into sets of icons that are used to promote destinations,
shape tourist activities, and adorn souvenirs. They
argue that the icons chosen reflect "evocative images of
what [tourists] wish to experience about the place they are
seeking and its past" (Vesey and Dimanche 2003, p. 55). In
their view, tourists seek a simplified, romantic version of
place and history "without the more difficult aspects of what
life was like in the past" and without "the reality of day-today
life [in] the host destination" (Vesey and Dimanche
2003, p. 55). Thus, heritage destinations are marketed, sold,
and consumed via systems of icons that represent particular
meanings of place while omitting other meanings.
In addition to demonstrating the extreme overgeneralization
(of both tourists and heritage sites) that is the Achilles'
heel of all grand social theory, the nostalgia critique, in our
view, suffers from several other conceptual problems as
well. From a standpoint of ontological relativity, perhaps the
most obvious problem is that it rests on the assumption that
there is one real history "out there," waiting to be discovered.
In other words, it views history as something that
exists independent of people's perceptions and interpretations,
and posits that there is some authority who can legitimately
declare others' views of history as "accurate" or
"unduly rosy" (i.e., "nostalgized"). Second, the nostalgia
critique implies that tourists evaluate society in an all-ornothing
framework and denies them the capability of assessing
individual features of the past and present as desirable or
undesirable. Thus, heritage tourists are restricted to viewing
the past as either better than the present or worse than the
present; they cannot view the past as both better and worse
than the present. Furthermore, the nostalgia critique
assumes tourists' assessments of the past as better than the
present to automatically be the product of irrational emotional
attachments, rather than logical reasoning, and to be
generally misguided and without merit (and, according to
Hewison (1987), even detrimental to society). However, it
seems at least logically plausible that some aspects of the
past may have been more desirable for society than the corresponding
aspects of the present and that tourists who
arrive at this conclusion might have done so through logical
reasoning regarding perceived benefits and drawbacks. This
view would position tourists as active, critical constructors
of the present and future, evaluating various aspects of
society at different historical moments and assessing their
value. Third, the nostalgia critique creates an agency vacuum.
As it argues, heritage sites pander to tourists, attracting
them by advertising and presenting "what they want to see"
(Dann 1996, p. 220). No one on the production end has any
agenda other than ensuring that the site receives visitors.
This seems strange, given that heritage sites are, by definition,
representations of cultural legacies. In turn, the tourist
passively accepts what the heritage site presents. This constitutes
the totality of his/her experience; he/she is in no way
an active agent in shaping the experience while at the site. It
is hard to imagine any exchange of cultural information so
devoid of agency on both sides. An alternative view would
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JOURNAL OF TRAVEL RESEARCH 373
see both managers and tourists as active participants in the
construction of both the pragmatics and meaning of the heritage
tourism experience, much as Chronis (2005) argues in
his recent analysis of heritage tourism at Gettysburg.
Previous Empirical Work on Tourists'
Experiences at Heritage Sites
Surprisingly, little empirical research exists on tourists'
experiences at heritage sites (Poria, Reichel, and Biran 2006).
Prentice has conducted studies with several colleagues
(Beeho and Prentice 1995, 1997; McIntosh and Prentice
1999; Prentice, Witt, and Hamer 1998) exploring visitor experiences
at industrial heritage sites in the United Kingdom, and
findings indicate that heritage tourism experiences are more
complicated than those who attribute the phenomenon to nostalgia
would suggest. Few respondents in the aforementioned
studies appeared to be either seeking or experiencing nostalgia
when they visited industrial heritage sites; rather, most
were motivated to visit by a desire to become more aware of
what life was like for industrial workers and their families
and/or to learn more about technological changes in industry
over time. Most tended to leave the sites not with the "rosy"
impressions that would be expected to have been gained from
a nostalgic experience, but with the feeling of having gained
insight into the hardships of life in an industrial village and
the opinion that present-day life represents an improvement
over life in the Victorian era. Results also showed that visitors
were not passive recipients of heritage tourism experiences.
Instead, they were "mindful," in Moscardo's (1996)
sense, meaning "active, interested, questioning and capable
of reassessing the way they view the world" (p. 382).
Furthermore, they often integrated new information with their
own memories of personal experiences, thus adding an associative
and affective dimension to the cognitive process of
being "mindful" (McIntosh and Prentice 1999). McIntosh and
Prentice (1999) term the result of this process of mental and
emotional learning "insightfulness." Additionally, these studies
revealed participants' heritage tourism experiences at the
sites in question to be more complex and multifaceted than
definitions of heritage tourism that focus solely on traveling
to learn about history would suggest. Many participants
expressed multiple motivations and enumerated multiple valued
outcomes of their visit, which included not only learning
about or feeling connected with history, but also enjoying the
scenery and local flora and fauna of the grounds on which the
heritage attraction was situated and having an opportunity to
share an interesting experience with family or friends. The
idea that heritage tourism experiences are more complex than
nostalgia theory would suggest is also supported by Masberg
and Silverman (1996), who found that a sample of undergraduate
students described their past heritage tourism experiences
as involving learning about history, spending time
with traveling companions, interacting with site personnel,
and enjoying nature.
By demonstrating that visitors' experiences were multifaceted,
rather than solely focused on learning about or connecting
with history, and that visitors frequently left sites
with an appreciation for the present, rather than a longing
for the past, Prentice and his colleagues may have had the
last word in the context of British industrial heritage sites;
however, nostalgia continues to be invoked to explain
tourism at other types of heritage sites, particularly sites
related to popular culture (e.g., Kibby 2000). One such site
is the Route 66 National Historic Corridor.
The Route 66 National Historic Corridor
Traveling Route 66, often dubbed the Mother Road and
the Main Street of America, has been described by many
as "the experience of a lifetime" (Steil 2000, p. 7). The
only highway to have attained the status of American cultural
icon, Route 66's familiar black and white shield is
recognized throughout the world (Wallis 2001). It has
inspired countless artistic endeavors, including a 66-footlong
painting and a song that has been recorded by over a
dozen artists, from Nat King Cole to the Rolling Stones to
Depeche Mode, and it holds an important place in the
works of such notable literary figures as Jack Kerouac and
John Steinbeck. So significant is Route 66 to U.S. cultural
history that the Smithsonian's National Museum in
Washington D.C. features an exhibit titled "America on
the Move," which includes an actual piece of Route 66
pavement.
One of America's first transcontinental highways, Route
66 was the result of the trend of increasing car ownership in
America, spurred by Henry Ford's assembly line production
of automobiles (Scott and Kelly 1988). Officially established
in 1926, Route 66 spanned 2,448 miles, stretching
from Chicago to Los Angeles (running through the states of
Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico,
Arizona, and California), becoming the first all-weather
road from the Midwest to the West Coast, and opening up
the Southwest for the first time to migrants, soldiers, and
vacationers traveling by automobile. By the 1950s, Route 66
had begun to become a victim of its own popularity. It had
already been re-routed in the 1930s, in order to eliminate
some unnecessary mileage and shorten the trip for tourists,
and it was successively widened in the 1950s and '60s to
accommodate greater traffic flows. Upon his return from
service in Germany during WWII, President Eisenhower,
who had become "smitten by the efficient German autobahn,"
advocated the creation of a similar highway system
in the U.S. (Wallis 2001, p. 25). In 1956, the U.S. Interstate
Highway System was initiated with the passage of a new
Federal Aid Highway Act, and by the 1970s, sections of
Route 66 began to be bypassed by the new high-speed, limited
access interstate highways. A grassroots Route 66
preservation movement began even before the road's federal
decommissioning in 1985; however, it was in the late 1980s
and early 1990s that this movement really gained momentum,
with the establishment of official Route 66 associations
in all eight states through which the highway passed. In
1990, Congress authorized the National Park Service (NPS)
to evaluate Route 66 as a resource for potential conservation
and, in 1999, declared it a National Historic Corridor and
appropriated a 10-year funding cycle of $10 million to be
used to provide cost-sharing grants for preservation and
restoration efforts.
Today, although many segments of the road are crumbling
due to neglect and exposure to the elements, Route 66
receives thousands of tourists from all over the world. Its corridor
contains resources to facilitate a highly diverse set of
experiences for visitors. In terms of landscape, Route 66 runs
from Lake Michigan to the Pacific Ocean, featuring deserts,
mountains, farmlands, small towns, and bustling cities along
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374 MAY 2007
the way. Moreover, the road is colorfully accentuated by
various examples of quirky Americana, including locally
owned "mom-and-pop" motels and restaurants, museums,
souvenir shops, ghost towns, and other assorted roadside
curiosities, most of which employ distinctive (and sometimes
outlandish) advertising and architectural motifs.
Unfortunately, despite Route 66's popularity and its elevation
to the status of "National Historic Corridor," the Route
has rarely shown its face in the academic literature, particularly
outside the disciplines of history (Dedek 2002) and
geography (Brady 1998; Puzo 1988). Only one short book
chapter (Kibby 2000) has ever explored any aspect of this heritage
site from a tourism perspective, and no empirical studies
have been conducted regarding the actual experience of
visiting Route 66. The Special Resource Study conducted for
Congress by the NPS includes only four pages on the experience
of traveling Route 66, and the majority of the text in
these pages is devoted to describing the landscape along the
corridor. Furthermore, visitors' perspectives were not
included in the NPS study, which poses an obvious limitation
for gaining an understanding of the Route 66 experience. As
is the case with popular culture heritage sites in general, the
little academic research that Route 66 has fostered mainly
attributes interest in the road to nostalgia. Dedek (2002), for
example, argues that nostalgia is the primary impetus behind
the "current wave of fascination for Route 66 and the [reason
why it] enjoys more national and international attention than
any other historic American highway" (p. 209). Through a
thematic textual analysis of articles published in Route 66
Magazine, he argues that "most . . . involve recollections of a
decade . . . that the authors consider to have been a simpler
`lost era,' a more honest and innocent time," and dubs this
style of writing "nostalgia literature" (pp. 230­231). The
hallmarks of the "lost era" he notes appear to be conservative
values, patriotism, and blissful ignorance of the problems
faced by members of marginalized social groups, such
as black Americans and women. Dedek further argues that
promotional Route 66 materials are also steeped in nostalgia,
claiming that the road is commonly positioned as a
symbol of a "lost, generally happier era in American
history" (p. 247). Similarly, in her study regarding the role
of the Internet in tourists' visits to Route 66, Kibby (2000)
also theorizes about tourist interest in popular culture heritage
sites. She states: "Heritage tourism represents a way
of recuperating the past for contemporary tourists, and is
part of a wider nostalgia for traditional social values, and an
appreciation of the way things were, or at least are perceived
to have been" and that this "collective nostalgia is
usually based on a reconstructed or mis-remembered social
past; on an idealized or romanticized history" (p. 40). She
then offers Route 66 as an example of a heritage site whose
visitors are "in all likelihood motivated by a nostalgia for a
popular-culture past" (p. 141). The visitors' desire for nostalgia
is fulfilled by their experiences traveling along Route
66, and through their articulation of these experiences,
the collective mythology of Route 66 as a symbol of an
idealized, romanticized American past is reaffirmed and
perpetuated.
Do propositions like Dedek's (2002) and Kibby's (2000)
gel with tourists' reports of their actual experiences on
Route 66? What are their experiences like, and how well
does nostalgia theory explain them? In other words, how
well does nostalgia theory function "on the ground"?
METHODOLOGY
Masberg and Silverman (1996), as well as Ingram (2002),
have suggested phenomenology as a promising, yet underutilized,
tool for understanding tourists' experiences. This study
employs heuristic inquiry, a branch of phenomenological
inquiry, which emphasizes gaining understanding of the
essences of people's lived experiences (Patton 2002). Heuristic
inquiry brings the researcher's personal experiences, reflections,
and insights to the fore of the project in order to understand
the essence of a phenomenon as it is experienced by the
researcher and by others who also experience it intensely
(Douglass and Moustakas 1985; Patton 2002).
Phenomenological inquiry seemed a natural choice for
this project, as the goal was to understand the essence of
people's experiences traveling along Route 66. It is also a
good fit for our values as researchers, as it emphasizes the
quest to understand people's experiences as they make sense
of them, rather than attempting to analyze them from a
detached, authoritative position. Within phenomenology,
heuristic inquiry was also a natural choice, as both authors
have personal experience traveling Route 66, and the first
author, in particular, lived along the Route for many years
and has traveled it repeatedly.
Personal Reflection
As heuristic inquiry involves a researcher deeply exploring
his/her own experiences with the researched phenomenon,
the first author engaged in much reflection about her
extensive Route 66 travels. She began by brainstorming
memories of trips taken and creating a list of meaningful
memories, which were defined as memories of experiences,
she considered to be central to and evocative of her Route 66
journeys. Next, she engaged in discussions with family
members and friends with whom she had traveled and asked
them to recall favorite memories. With each conversation,
new memories were added to the list, and an attempt was
made to determine why each experience recalled was important.
Scrapbooks and photo albums were also consulted, and
this resulted in the addition of more memories to the list.
Active Interviews
In-depth, guided, active interviews were conducted with
eight individuals. Active interviews, as conceived by
Holstein and Gubrium (1995), are interviews that are conversational
in nature, recognize the role of researchers and
participants as co-creators of meaning, and take cultivating
participants' narrative activity as their primary goal. A
guided interview format was chosen so that the general topics
of discussion could be directed, in order to produce interview
transcripts that could be placed in conversation with
each other, while at the same time allowing participants
maximum latitude within topic areas (Patton 2002). The
interview guide consisted of four questions/topic areas: (1)
How did you become interested in traveling Route 66?; (2)
Tell me about your trip; (3) What did you find meaningful
about traveling Route 66?; and (4) Do you have any hopes
or concerns about the future of Route 66? Interviews were
conducted by the first author, in English, in the location of
the interviewee's choice. Each interview lasted between two
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JOURNAL OF TRAVEL RESEARCH 375
and fifteen hours, with longer interviews being broken into
segments over a period of three consecutive days. All interviews
were recorded and transcribed for the purpose of
analysis.
Narrative Inquiry
There has been an increasing interest in the potential of personal
narratives to illuminate social phenomena (Polkinghorne
1995). While narratives have been defined differently, they are
generally agreed to have certain basic features, including
characters, a setting, and a plot. As Riessman (2003) explains,
"Narration is distinguished by ordering and sequence; one
action is viewed as consequential for the next" (p. 334).
Several scholars (e.g., Polkinghorne 1995; Richardson 1990)
have argued that narratives are the natural way that people organize
the events of their lives into meaningful wholes, and
hence, make sense of their experiences. Narrative inquiry is
thus an approach that empowers research participants by
respecting the way they organize meaning in their lives
(Reissman 2003). Furthermore, because narratives are so central
to the way people understand their realities, they can offer
"especially translucent windows" into personal and cultural
meanings of various events and phenomena (Patton 2002, p.
116). The first two topic areas from the interview guide
overtly encouraged answers in narrative form. Each participant
recalled the story of how he/she had become interested
in traveling Route 66, and each told the story of his/her trip.
When recounting the stories of their trips, however, participants'
master narratives sometimes lost their chronological
form. This happened because one memory would sometimes
trigger another memory of an experience that had not
occurred sequentially but that was related to the first memory
thematically. Sometimes, the memories mentioned were from
different trips, as the participants had visited the corridor
multiple times. Overall, however, when the participants had
finished relating their experiences and they were asked to
summarize what Route 66 and the experience of traveling it
meant to them, they tended to return to their master narratives,
bringing the experience together into a grand conclusion
of what they felt they had gained from the trip.
Photo-Elicitation
Photo-elicitation has been described as the process of
inserting photographs into a research interview (Harper 2002).
Scholars who have used photo-elicitation as a research tool
have argued that the use of participants'pictures in interviews
can help to sharpen their memories and make it easier for
them to communicate these memories to the researcher
(Harper 2002). In addition, the use of photos in interviews has
also been noted to reduce interviewee fatigue (Colliers 1957
cited in Harper 2002) and to ease rapport between the
researcher and participants by lessening the awkwardness of
the interview situation (Clarke-Ibáez 2004). In this study,
participants were asked in advance to bring to the interview
any photographs taken during their travels that they felt
comfortable sharing; five of the eight participants chose to do
so, and the images they provided were used to elicit their
thoughts and memories. In each case in which photographs
were used, the interview began with a conversation about the
participant's experiences, and then the photographs were
introduced into the interview midway through. In addition to
photographs, some of the interview participants also chose to
share other items that helped to facilitate reflection and discussion,
such as scrapbooks and print articles.
Selection of Participants
The authors specifically sought to interview participants
for whom traveling Route 66 had been a highly meaningful
experience.All exploratory studies must start somewhere, and
since this project sought to understand tourists'experiences as
they make sense of them, it was determined that studying
travel meanings of those for whom a particular type of travel
was most meaningful would yield the most depth. Indeed, the
selected sample of participants provided the researchers with
rich and lengthy insights that were later placed in conversation
with nostalgia theory's underlying assumptions in order
to begin to assess the theory's robustness.
Approximately one-half of today's Route 66 tourists
come from northern Europe, while those in the remaining
half are mostly American (Wallis 2001). In choosing interview
participants, this diversity was reflected, in the hope
that it would add depth to the study. To access northern Europeans
who had traveled Route 66, e-mails were sent to the
listed contact persons on the official Web sites of the Route
66 associations of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Norway.
Additionally, the owner of a German business that offers
Route 66 motorcycle tours was contacted. Two of the contact
persons agreed to be interviewed, and one additionally
agreed to recommend other potential participants. Route 66
organization Web sites were used to seek study participants
because it was assumed that such organizations would likely
be filled with individuals to whom Route 66 was highly
meaningful. To access Americans who had traveled Route
66, the authors relied on snowball sampling, in which personal
contacts recommended acquaintances who had traveled
Route 66 multiple times and who appeared to have
found the experience meaningful. In the end, a total of five
Europeans (one German and four Norwegians) and three
Americans were interviewed. Additionally, personal reflections
were provided by the first author (as per heuristic
inquiry methodology), who is American, bringing the total
number of American participants to four. Each participant
had traveled the road multiple times, with some making several
trips a year. Participants included three women and five
men, age 25 to 50. Their occupations included business
owner, homemaker, college professor, and engineer. All of
the participants have been assigned pseudonyms.
Data Analysis
All transcripts were read and analyzed independently by
both authors to facilitate an in-depth discussion of the findings.
To answer the research questions, this study used a combination
of case and pattern analysis. Each author began by
creating a "shorthand case study," or a case study in outline
form, of each participant's experiences. As explained by
Patton (2002), case analysis involves creating a comprehensive,
in-depth record of each unit of the phenomenon in question
(in this situation, each participant's set of Route 66
experiences), and then analyzing that record to gain an understanding
of that particular case. This process constituted an
exercise of pattern analysis within the case, as each of the
authors tried to grasp the heart of what had been meaningful
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376 MAY 2007
about the experience for the participant and why. Next, the
degree to which nostalgia theory seemed to explain the participant's
experience was evaluated, and notes were made.
After each case was analyzed individually, a process of comparison
and negotiation among the authors' findings resulted
in further refinements. Next, the resulting outlines were set
side by side for comparison. Many patterns across cases were
noted, both in terms of what the participants had found meaningful
about their experiences, and in terms of nostalgia
theory's ability to explain their experiences. Finally, it is
important to note that much of the first part of the analysis
was done on an on-going basis, so that each transcript was
analyzed before subsequent interviews were conducted; this
process was repeated until the authors arrived at a point of saturation.
In other words, in collecting and interpreting data,
over time, we reached a point of diminishing returns; when
this occurred, we ceased interviewing.
ELEMENTS OF THE ROUTE 66
EXPERIENCE
Gaining Historical Insight
First, and perhaps most obvious, traveling Route 66
involves gaining historical insight. Travel brochures for Route
66 typically emphasize the corridor as a place where tourists
can learn about several aspects of American history, including
the evolution of road-building practices, the evolution of
vernacular architectural styles, the history of American westward
migration, and the changing form of U.S. urban areas.
Additionally, because Route 66 is a corridor, rather than a single
site, it is comprised of smaller regional and local units,
each with its own distinct history. Not surprisingly then, the
participants expressed an interest in history as a motivating
factor of their Route 66 travels and thought they had gained
historical insight from the experience in accord with their own
areas of interest. Rob, Carol, and Ionis each discussed the
many ways they took advantage of opportunities Route 66 presented
for learning about history. First, they gained knowledge
by reading and observing. For instance, Rob noted: "I have an
extensive Route 66 book collection, and so, you know, I had
read the books before we went and . . . it was kind of interesting
to see what you'd read and seen in books and to actually
see it." He pointed out the informative placards in several pictures
he had taken of old bridges along Route 66. Carol also
noted these signs and said they had helped her make sense of
the way the bridges fit into history, in terms of evolving transportation
technology. There were also discussions regarding
learning about architecture. Carol stated, "It was interesting to
see how the interpretation of art deco changed from Illinois to
California. When you think of art deco you think of South
Beach, Miami, kind of one look, but it wasn't . . . There were
local interpretations." Rob and Carol also thought they had
gained historical insight through direct personal experience.
An example is revealed in one reflection offered by Carol:
There was this one place where the whole town was
deserted . . . You felt like you were alone, and for me,
I tried to imagine back in the thirties or something
going across country, and of course they didn't have
modern vehicles--just to try to put yourself there.
For me, that was the most interesting [thinking about]
just the vastness of it. How big the country is. How
far it must have seemed.
The European participants also discussed gaining historical
insight as an important element of their travels. Both Liv
and Baer B. thought that an interest in history was a major
motivating factor not only for themselves, but also for many
of the people who had traveled in their group. Like the
Americans, the Europeans interviewed also thought that
their opportunities for learning about history had not been
limited to the lectures they attended and exhibits they viewed,
while traveling along the corridor. Specifically, they mentioned
gaining historical insight as a function of their chosen
mode of transportation. Riding through the Mojave Desert
on a motorcycle, unprotected from the heat, led Baer B. to
wonder "how the older cars ever made it without destroying
their radiators" and noted that it wouldn't be a nice place to
be stuck for people whose cars had broken down. They also
discussed the heat tourists must have experienced in the era
before cars were equipped with air conditioning and noted
that they had come to understand why, historically, many
people had chosen to drive the desert stretches of Route 66
at night. Liv noted that after having had the experience of
traveling these segments by motorcycle, trying everything
she could imagine to stay cool (including wrapping soaking
wet towels around her neck and putting ice cubes inside her
clothes and boots), she thought she could relate in some
small way to some of the challenges faced by travelers of the
past.
Driving
Those interviewed noted that an important feature of
Route 66 is the unusual type of driving experience it offers.
During the era when Route 66 was constructed, roadbuilding
technology was relatively primitive. It was not cost
efficient, and sometimes not even possible, to route roads
over, under, or through large natural features (Wallis 2001).
Furthermore, it would have constituted bad planning. Jakle
(1985) quotes planners Nolen and Hubbard (1937), who
wrote: "In gradient and alignment the road should lie comfortably
upon the topography, appearing to occupy a miraculously
favorable natural location rather than to be cruelly
forced through against the `lay of the land'" (p. 43).
Nevertheless, the conveniences promised by technological
innovations in road building led Americans to champion
function at the expense of form, and so began an "endless
clamor for utilitarian roadscapes" (Jakle 1985, p. 143).
There was a price to be paid for the convenience afforded by
the interstates, however: many tourists ceased to connect
with the territory through which they drove. The interstates
that replaced Route 66 and other early highways were
largely insensitive to the landscape, boring through mountains,
chiseling away buttes, and leaving drivers with a
visual experience so monotonous that it actually became
dangerous, as it encouraged drivers to speed, or alternatively,
to fall asleep at the wheel (Jakle 1985; Wallis 2001).
Older highways like Route 66 represent an opportunity
for tourists to experience the landscape in a more intimate
way and to involve their bodies more fully in the driving
experience. All those interviewed noted this aspect of the
Route 66 experience; in fact, for most, the act of driving
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under such conditions seemed to be the central feature of the
trip. Rob, for instance, talked about how he had originally
become interested in traveling Route 66 largely because of
his enjoyment of taking road trips, and he explained that he
had particularly wanted to drive a two-lane road. He also
noted that Route 66 provided good conditions for traveling
in an open-topped vehicle--in his case, a 1993 Alfa Spyder
convertible--because he could drive at a relaxing pace.
Unlike many other highways of its type, Route 66 is no
longer a commissioned highway, so few people travel it
for long distances other than Route 66 tourists. Hence, it is
rarely crowded with people who are in a hurry to be somewhere
else. Carol, Ionis, and the first author also thought the
lack of traffic and low speed limits they encountered enabled
them to relax and enjoy the sensory aspects of the drive,
such as "the feel of the air" and the "360 degree view."
In addition to having comparatively low traffic volumes,
Route 66 is rather unique among highways of its kind because
it passes through such a rich variety of natural landscapes as
it makes its way from Chicago to Los Angeles. According
to National Park Service statistics, the Route 66 corridor
encompasses seven distinct natural resource regions, each
with its own particular climate, topography, soil, vegetation,
and wildlife. Thus, tourists who make the trip in one to two
weeks find that the landscape changes dramatically almost
daily. All of those interviewed felt the changing landscapes
were a very important aspect of the trip and made frequent
references to them, such as Ike's comment: "We ride a very
long stretch of Highway 66 in Oklahoma. I like it because of
the red earth." As Baer B. said, "It's just exciting, crossing
America from the east to the west. Just the idea of crossing
not a country but a continent and experiencing such incredibly
different landscapes from day to day is tremendous."
Visiting Unique Places
The third key element of the Route 66 experience
involved not the road itself, but the elements along it. For
these interviewees, a large part of the charm of Route 66
stemmed from the vast assortment of amazing and amusing
attractions, both natural and human-made, that the corridor
houses. Stopping to visit natural wonders, idiosyncratic
tourist attractions, and businesses with unique signature
appearances or practices was a very important part of the trip.
All the participants mentioned visiting natural wonders that
lie along the corridor, especially the Grand Canyon, as a
favorite trip activity. Baer B.'s description of his experience
at the Grand Canyon exemplifies the sentiments expressed by
each of the tourists interviewed: "It was just amazing. When
you stand on the edge, and you look, it's so tremendous, you
can't swallow it all. It's overwhelming." Several of the European
tourists also mentioned visiting the Blue Hole, an artesian
well in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. Almost as deep as it
is wide and filled with intensely blue-green water, the Blue
Hole is a rather surreal sight in its high desert surroundings.
The participants found the geology of this attraction fascinating,
but they were even more enamored with the opportunity
it provided to splash around in the cold water after a
long, hot day on their motorcycles. The comments of Ike and
Bear B., noted in the previous section, regarding their appreciation
of the landscapes along Route 66 also reinforced the
notion that visiting unique natural places was an important
part of the experience for this group of tourists.
In his book Route 66: The Empires of Amusement, Repp
(1999) chronicles the sideshow-style attractions that historically
peppered the corridor, such as the Jesse James Wax
Museum and the Reptile Ranch, and views their popularity
with tourists as a logical outgrowth of late nineteenth and
early twentieth century America's infatuation with circuses,
carnivals, and boardwalk-style amusement parks. This infatuation
is apparently still alive and well today, as the attractions
of this variety that remain were quite popular with the
participants. Most of them recounted experiences at the Blue
Whale, a enormous concrete sculpture that lies alongside the
Route in Catoosa, Oklahoma; Cadillac Ranch, a sculpture
created by eccentric artist Stanley Marsh, who commissioned
the partial burial of 10 vintage Cadillacs near Amarillo,
Texas, in the 1970s and left an open invitation for passers-by
to embellish the above-ground portions of the cars with personalized
designs; and the "ghost town" of Oatman, Arizona,
where staged shootouts between the sheriff and a local band
of bank robbers occur several times daily.
Repp (1999) distinguishes Route 66 businesses that were
established solely to entertain tourists from those that were
created to provide "necessary travel services" (i.e., motels,
restaurants), describing the former as roadside attractions.
However, this division is not as clear as it might seem. For
the most part, the motels, restaurants, and service stations
that operate along Route 66 predate the practice of franchising
and its strategy of "place­product­packaging," which
relies on uniformity of design and service to communicate
reliability and quality (Jakle, Sculle, and Rogers 1996). With
no corporate logo to endorse them, these "mom-and-pop"
businesses have to be creative in order to attract customers.
Toward this end, they employ numerous tactics, most of
which involve capitalizing on local lore and landscapes
(including particular representations of ethnic groups like
Native Americans and Hispanics) and exercising wild hyperbole.
They communicate their unique identities through outlandish
building designs and/or signage, through claims
made on billboards and menus, and through unusual sales
and service practices. Examples include the Wigwam Motel
in Holbrook, Arizona, which consists of a set of eight freestanding
concrete teepee-shaped buildings that function as
motel rooms; the Iceburg gas station in Albuquerque, a service
station with a building design that echoed its name (and
one that sought to attract attention through contrast, rather
than congruence, with the local landscape); and Ted Drewes'
Custard Stand in St. Louis, where extra-thick milkshakes
called "concretes" are handed to customers upside-down to
demonstrate their consistency. Thus, visiting Route 66 businesses
to procure "necessary travel services" has always
involved an element of entertainment.
The participants enthusiastically offered stories about
their experiences with Route 66 business establishments.
Seemingly mundane activities like taking an evening meal
became entertaining adventures because of the creative marketing
strategies employed by the businesses. A favorite
example was clearly The Big Texan Steak Ranch, a roadside
steakhouse in Amarillo that advertises a free 72-ounce steak
(also called "The Big Texan") to anyone who can eat it
(along with a litany of side dishes) within one hour.
Contestants sit on a platform at the front of the restaurant
under a large clock, and their dining task becomes an amusing
spectacle for the other patrons. Thus, an ordinary life
activity, dining in a restaurant, becomes highly interesting
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because it involves not simply food, but novelty, humor,
sociability, deviation from ordinary social norms regarding
gluttonous behavior, performance, and challenge; in short,
it becomes an adventure.
Those interviewed did not enjoy visiting Route 66's
attractions solely because they found them entertaining,
however. They also seemed to think that the attractions represented
something that was missing in the geography and
consumer alternatives of their ordinary lives and vacation
experiences: uniqueness and individuality. For the
Americans, traveling Route 66 seemed to represent an
escape from the ubiquitous corporate presence that dominates
their everyday landscapes and consumer experiences,
rendering them generic and monotonous. Each noted that
they had tried to "avoid chain restaurants and motels" and,
instead, visit "unique local businesses." For the Europeans,
the idiosyncratic, locally owned businesses/attractions represented
a said of America they thought had been lacking in
other U.S. tourist destinations. They said that many parts of
America had become "corporate" and "generic," solely
motivated by profit, but that Route 66 was different. As Liv
said:
There's nothing fake there . . . There's just real stuff.
You can go and have a lot of fun and go to Disney
World and see big shows in NewYork, but it's not the
same. I guess there are shows [on Route 66], like in
Oatman, but it's different to me. These guys that do
this [wild west] show, they live in Oatman. I think
one is even the mayor. And the money they make, it
goes to a children's hospital. You know, it makes it a
lot more real.
Interacting with People
Participants emphasized interacting with people they
met along the road as a particularly meaningful element of
the trip. Ike commented: "A very special thing [is that] on
Route 66 you are always meeting people. You get a lot of
friends." Arkin also mentioned this: "When [I'm] on Route
66, I would say that my first priority is meeting people . . .
And then next, maybe, the places? . . . but foremost it's the
people." The participants felt that they had genuinely connected
with people along the road. They viewed the people
they met as honest and open and felt that their interest in
meeting tourists stemmed not from a desire for financial
gain, but from an innate sense of hospitality and curiosity
and a sincere enjoyment of interacting with others. Their
encounters did not feel scripted, but spontaneous and from
the heart. In an era in which many tourism experiences are
perceived as standardized, commoditized, and characterized
by rigid social role imposition, the absence of these qualities
along Route 66 seemed markedly noticeable to these
tourists.
In addition to discussing the people of Route 66 in general
terms, participants told many stories of specific interactions
they had found especially meaningful on their trips.
These stories seemed to have particular unifying elements
that illustrated the kinds of social encounters the participants
had experienced and why they valued them. First, several of
the stories told involved individuals who had provided services
for tourists with little or no concern for economic
profit. The interviewees seemed to interpret the lack of a
profit motive as an indication of the service providers' sincerity
and intrinsic motivation to interact with them. For
example, Baer B. related the following story:
This lady made sandwiches for everybody [in our
group]. [She made] like 50 sandwiches and made
nametags for every sandwich in Norwegian; she
found out how to write the names in Norwegian . . .
through the Internet . . . This lady had made [sandwiches]
for a group of 26 hungry people--you know,
she made a lot of sandwiches--and I said, "Where
can I pay?" [And she said], "Pay? No, I don't want
any money." [So I said], "Of course, you have to have
some money for all of this. It's 26 hungry guys here,
you know. It's a lot of food." [She said], "No, no."
She didn't want to hear of letting me pay.
Similarly, Liv discussed her encounter with the late Juan
Delgadillo, a long famous presence on Route 66. Juan and his
brother Angel were octogenarian Route 66 activists and entrepreneurs.
Angel, "the kind brother," runs a barbershop in
Seligman, Arizona. The barbershop is filled with Route 66
memorabilia relating to Angel's active role in the preservation
movement (he was an original founder and is president emeritus
of the Arizona Route 66 Association). An equally important
tourist attraction is the Dead Chicken Diner, located next
door to Angel's barbershop and operated for many years by
Juan, "the mischievous brother." Visitors to the diner typically
found Juan behind the counter, masterminding a continuous
assault of practical jokes on his patrons. Juan's arsenal
included plastic insects that randomly turned up on people's
cheeseburgers, mustard bottles that shot in the wrong direction,
and many other devices that alarmed and delighted customers.
Liv commented on Juan's style of interaction:
He spends so much time with everybody--with each
person. I mean, he plays lots of tricks on each person.
He has a line out the door of people waiting to order.
He could get a lot more people through, but he
doesn't. I know it's part of his business to play tricks
on people, but he doesn't have to spend so much time
on each person.
Liv viewed the time and attention Juan lavished on each
patron as indicative of his intrinsic motivation to interact
with them. The fact that he could have served more customers
and, hence, turned more profit but chose not to, indicated
to her that generating revenue was not his primary
goal; instead he sincerely enjoyed interacting with his visitors,
and that made the experience more meaningful for her.
Participants also emphasized the importance of serendipity
in shaping their social interactions along Route 66. They
often met new people through shared connections in an
extensive social grapevine, or because of unforeseen circumstances
in the physical environment, such as problematic
weather or road conditions. Thus, many of their interactions
with people were spontaneous and serendipitous in nature.
For instance, some of the Norwegian participants mentioned
a group of people they had met on Route 66 through a lucky
connection facilitated by Baer N.'s wife, who had lived with
a family in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as a high school exchange
student 20 years before. When she called her host family and
told them that a group of Norwegian motorcycle tourists
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would be traveling through Tulsa on a Route 66 tour, her host
mother contacted a local acquaintance, Susanna Wallis, wife
of Michael Wallis, a famous Route 66 historian and author,
and the two of them organized an event in which area residents
made lunch for the tour group at a local church and
shared their stories about living along the road.
However, despite all the wonderful memories recounted,
the people of Route 66 aren't perfect. They have good days
and bad days like anyone else. Most of them seem generally
friendly, while others are well known for being surly. Ike and
the first author shared a laugh about the cook at a popular
lunch restaurant on Route 66, whom Ike described as "always
grumpy," and the author shared a story about how she had
seen this cook chase a group of film students who were trying
to shoot footage of the restaurant's sign off of the property,
yelling and flailing his arms wildly as he ran them out. Also,
many of the people who operate businesses along Route 66
are elderly and are increasingly facing health problems that
affect everything from their mobility to their moods. While
some Route 66 tourists are less than understanding about this,
the participants in this study did not express criticism about
the imperfections of people they met along the road; rather,
they felt that the multidimensionality of the people they met
on Route 66 was precisely what they appreciated about them.
As Liv commented, "The people [of Route 66] are just so real.
There's nothing fake about them."Arkin agreed: "They're just
people. That's what makes it great."
Participants also frequently mentioned their interactions
with fellow tourists as a meaningful aspect of the experience.
Most notably, they commented on the bonds they formed with
their traveling companions, even when this outcome seemed
unlikely from the trip's outset. For example, Baer N.
explained that the group with which he had traveled was comprised
of members who ranged from millionaires to individuals
who had rarely traveled outside of Norway and who had
to take second jobs shearing sheep in order to save money for
the trip. He said, "We met at the airport, and . . . [we had]
these kind of different people . . . but after one day on Harley,
everyone was just the same. It's one team, and here we go!"
Participants who traveled in large groups were not the only
ones who mentioned bonding with their companions. Rob and
Carol, who took the trip as a twosome, noted the benefits of
traveling together for their relationship. Carol commented
that she thought the trip had brought them closer together
and left them desiring to take more road trips together.
Undertaking an Odyssey
An odyssey seems a particularly adept metaphor for the
Route 66 experience because it combines the ideas of adventure,
challenge, cooperation, serendipity, reflection, and personal
growth, all of which were mentioned frequently in the
participants' narratives. Perhaps the interviewees didn't experience
anything as dramatic as an encounter with a cyclops,
but the stories they shared clearly revealed the way their trips
challenged them, placed them in novel situations, and led
them to think about things they had never considered before.
As Ike pointed out, traveling Route 66, especially by motorcycle,
is not "a normal vacation." It takes a lot of effort to
cover so much ground in such a short time. Liv explained: "It
is a lot of work. When I come home . . . , I'm really, really,
really tired. I'm exhausted." The sheer physical demands of
riding a motorcycle from Chicago to Los Angeles can present
a formidable challenge for some. As Liv explained:
The challenge is to sit on the bikes and ride Route
66 all the way. A lot of . . . people [in our group]
maybe should have gotten off their bikes, sat in the
van and cooled off. Some people get sick . . . a lot
of people get eye problems, because of the air, and
they should have been in the van, but they weren't.
No way you could get them off their bikes, because
then they haven't ridden all the way from LA to
Chicago.
Ike shared similar sentiments. He explained that many of the
people who participate in his tours are older business managers
who are used to spending time indoors, flexing only
their mental muscles. Many have never ridden motorcycles
prior to their Route 66 tour. As Ike noted, the trip gives these
unlikely adventurers the opportunity to stretch beyond their
normal comfort zone, challenge themselves, and defy the
expectations of those around them.
The challenge of traveling Route 66 by motorcycle can
be compounded by bad weather. Powerful thunderstorms
can arise quickly and unexpectedly, especially on the desert
stretches of the road, and in some areas, the nearest shelter
may be several miles away. Ike shared a story about being
caught in a violent thunderstorm in the middle of a long
stretch in rural New Mexico. He explained that he had literally
been afraid for his life, that it had taken all his skills to
keep his motorcycle upright and on the road, and that he was
so shaken and overwhelmed by the experience that it led
him to reevaluate his priorities and, ultimately, to reshape
his life and his relationship to nature. He referred to the incident
as "the change of my life."
In addition to facing the challenges of the road, the participants
also grew as a result of their interactions with
their traveling companions, as well as through encounters
with people they met along the road, which often led them
to consider things they had never thought about before. For
example, while the Norwegians found most people along
Route 66 to be friendly and welcoming, American stereotypes,
which cast motorcycle riders as rebellious and dangerous,
sometimes caused the group to be perceived
negatively. Liv discussed this phenomenon through stories
of the group's experiences and noted its novelty for her.
Her stories were quite humorous and provoked raucous
laughter, but it was clear that she had reflected seriously on
them:
We came into a Taco Bell one time . . . There were a
lot of people in there, but they just left. We pulled up
on 22 bikes, and we suddenly saw a lot of people
leaving, but there was one guy [who came in] . . .
this one guy and his wife. [He] approached us [and
said], "I noticed that you couldn't be Hell's Angels1
for two reasons: Because all the bikes were so neatly
parked and [there were] no police" [laughter]. So
they dared to come in there. He was a professional
clown; that was his work [wild laughter]. He was the
only one who dared to come in. There were 26 of us
and 2 of them, 1 clown and his wife [more wild
laughter].
 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
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380 MAY 2007
The tone became more serious as Liv continued.
We go in black t-shirts, and we look kind of scary. [I]
remember the time we stopped to ask a nice lady the
way, and her child was out on the swings swinging in
the yard, and she took her child and just [Liv motions
whisking the child inside]. I took off my helmet. I
knew that maybe we looked scary, so I took off my
helmet to show her before I came over to her that I
was a woman, but she still ran in the house . . . It's
kind of a weird experience. I've never experienced
that before--that someone's afraid of me . . . I guess
that's a pretty new experience for a woman.
Several others also recalled social encounters that caused
them to reflect and gain new insights, including the first
author, who noted conversations in her personal reflections
that had led her to ponder about the privileges and challenges
she experiences, about her character and values, and
about the choices she makes in daily life.
NOSTALGIA THEORY AND THE
ROUTE 66 EXPERIENCE
After analyzing the narratives of the study participants,
we conclude that nostalgia theory does not encapsulate their
experiences for four reasons. First, participants did not
appear to hold a predominately past-oriented view of the
site. Second, to the extent that history was a salient element
of the experience for participants, none of them seemed to
come away from the trip with a "rosy" view of the past.
Third, rather than seeking and experiencing familiarity
along Route 66, participants sought and experienced challenge
and personal growth. Finally, participants revealed
themselves to be active constructors of their experiences,
rather than passive recipients of information.
"We Don't Just Go for the History": PresentCentered
Orientations
The participants in this study did not appear to hold a
predominately past-oriented view of Route 66, but instead
saw the corridor as an evolving place, with much of its
meaning and value stemming from its current elements and
the experiences they facilitate. As noted previously, such
experiences include driving a quiet, two-lane road with
richly varied scenery; visiting unique and quirky places; and
interacting with new people or with familiar people in new
ways. Clearly, these experiences are tied to history, in the
sense that the characteristics of the road and the establishments
along it are the direct result of particular historical
conditions. However, the meaning of traveling Route 66 for
participants seemed not to lie primarily in the knowledge
that the experience was grounded in history in some way,
although this contributed to some extent, as they enjoyed the
feeling of participating in a living legacy of travel along an
historic highway. Rather, participants seemed to view the
meaning of Route 66 as lying predominantly in the actual
visceral experience of driving the road, seeing the landscape,
feeling the wind, laughing at the giant sombreros and
concrete cacti that adorn Route 66 restaurants and motels,
gorging on gargantuan steaks, and talking with people who
have made a life out of performing passable renditions of
folk songs for tourists or surreptitiously slipping plastic spiders
onto their sandwiches. The stories they told focused on
these kinds of occurrences and on what it was like to experience
them firsthand, rather than on the relationship of
these occurrences to the past. As Baer N. explained, "We
like history, but we don't just go for the history. Route 66 is
about driving, fun, excitement."
The participants also did not indicate that they viewed
their experiences on Route 66 as replicas of experiences
available in earlier decades or as representative of life in
America in earlier decades, as Dedek's (2002) study of
Route 66 Magazine articles concluded. Indeed, in most
cases, such experiences could not have been facilitated by
Route 66 in the era in which it was a commissioned highway.
For example, throughout much of the 1940s, '50s, and
'60s, Route 66 was choked with traffic. Some of the participants
mentioned that the experience of driving unhindered
on the open road that they found to be so relaxing, enjoyable,
and safe for motorcyclists would not have been possible
if Route 66 were still "the Way West" for the majority of
tourists. If Route 66 were still heavily traveled, one would
also be unlikely to easily find a motel room or an uncrowded
diner on the first try, an opportunity prized by some of the
tourists in this study. Additionally, most of the specific individuals
living and working along the Route, who participants
mentioned as making the experience particularly
special for them, were too young to have been a part of the
corridor when Route 66 was a commissioned highway.
Thus, while the participants saw themselves as participating
in a legacy of travel, they did not seem to confuse the experiences
available today with those available in the past or to
indicate that they were less valuable than those available in
the past. Rather, they saw the corridor as an evolving place
that offers a different, and highly valuable, set of experiences
for tourists today than it offered in the past.
In addition, participants also seemed to be generally at
peace with the inevitability of change as it relates to the corridor.
This was indicated through comments like Baer N.'s
during a discussion about how many of the people who lived
and worked along Route 66 in its commissioned era have
recently passed away:
When the old people are dying, you have to find a
new way to tell the history. But it could make it even
more exciting, because, you know, you could get
people with a real interest in Route 66 to come in and
run the places. Like if you go today, it's great. You
meet a lot of new--a lot of young--people telling
you about history. They're really concerned about it;
they're proud about it. It's great. I mean, I don't only
care about meeting people born 100 years ago . . .
You have to bring [history] through every generation.
Rob also expressed his acceptance of inevitable change,
when he discussed some of the people and resources that
have been lost over time:
In some ways, it's similar to the railroads, you know?
There's not much left really . . . The railroads were in
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their heyday in the late nineteenth century, and now
there's just nobody left. So, you know, that's part of
life, part of civilization. It just passes. So I guess I
don't get too upset about it. I do think the roadbed
could be better preserved, though.
He also discussed change along the corridor, in terms of new
structures being added to the landscape: "Of course it's
going to change over time. It's good to see new commerce
that sustains the road. I wouldn't want them to build a WalMart
on it, but it's good to see new people getting involved,
opening businesses." Arkin felt similarly:
I wouldn't want it to turn into a new Disneyland of
the Southwest, where you just get on the tram in
Chicago and get off in Los Angeles. I'm concerned
about it becoming sort of more than it is in that way.
I wouldn't want it to lose its character and uniqueness.
I do want more people to be able to experience
it though, so that might require more infrastructure
than there is now, if it keeps [gaining] popularity.
Nostalgia theory does not recognize a broad range of
meanings and benefits to be associated with heritage sites.
Instead, it conceptualizes them narrowly, as places where
travelers go to experience a glorified version of history, to
ease their anxieties over what they perceive to be a woebegotten
present (Hewison 1987). Under such a conceptualization,
heritage sites should be locked in an imaginary
version of the past, rather than being dynamic and evolving,
and tourists should prefer it that way. That these participants
emphasized the sensory, social, and developmental aspects
of their Route 66 travels as much as the historical aspects,
and that they could identify and appreciate changes along
the corridor, suggests that nostalgia theory is insufficient to
explain their experiences.
No Rose-Colored Windshield: Lack of Distorted
Distillation of History
All of the participants expressed an interest in history as
one of the motivating factors for traveling Route 66 and
thought they had gained historical insight from the experience.
However, when reasoning about history, none of the
participants seemed to engage in practices of selection and
distillation to arrive at a generalized view of the past, as nostalgia
theory claims (Hewison 1987; Vesey and Dimanche
2003). They did not seem to come away with a solely positive
view of the past as it relates to Route 66, to compare the
present unfavorably to the past, or even to make generalizations
about either the past or present at all. Rather, when discussing
the past and present, they tended to focus on specific
elements of each and compare them through a logical analysis
of their benefits and drawbacks. They also did not view
the past and present as mutually exclusive; rather, they recognized
continuity (i.e., they saw civilization as constantly
under revision) and believed that particular elements of
value from the past could be retained alongside or combined
with newer developments to achieve optimal utility. Such
ideas contradict the contention of the nostalgia critique that
heritage tourists reject the present in favor of a glorified version
of the past and that their visits to heritage sites reinforce
these views. They also contradict the critique's underlying
assumption that heritage tourists hold predominately generalized
views of the past and present, rather than viewing each as
a conglomeration of conditions, practices, and so on, which
can be evaluated somewhat independently and employed in
various combinations.
Let us illustrate more specifically. Participants viewed
Route 66 as a symbol of the importance of automobile travel
to life in twentieth-century America, but made no sweeping,
value-laden judgments about life in America in the past, and
did not valorize Route 66 as being representative of any perceived
American values in the way that the contributors to
Route 66 Magazine, cited in Dedek's (2002) study, seemed
to. No comments were made that reflected associations of
Route 66 with innocence, honesty, respectfulness, or patriotism.
The reason for this may lie in the age range and nationalities
of the study participants; perhaps associations
between Route 66 and nostalgic perceptions of American
culture in earlier decades are only salient for individuals
who lived in America during those decades. However, given
that nostalgia has less to do with individuals' previous personal
experiences than with their search for glorified representations
of the past that support particular values and
ideologies they associate with the earlier eras and perceive
to be disappearing in modernity, and given that the nostalgia
critique has frequently been lobbed at heritage sites with
subject matter that predates the lives of most current visitors,
the fact that study participants did not appear to read
Route 66 as an all-encompassing symbol for a generalized,
romanticized view of life in America in earlier eras still represents
an important challenge to the nostalgia critique as a
robust explanation of the heritage tourism experience.
When participants did comment about history, they
tended to focus on particular aspects of it, such as the kinds
of automotive technology that would have been available at
certain points in history, or the social circumstances that
would have compelled people to travel on Route 66, or the
challenges and rewards associated with running a business
on Route 66. Furthermore, none of the participants seemed
to have emerged from the trip with a particularly "rosy"
impression of history, as it relates to Route 66. None of them
glorified the era when Route 66 was a commissioned road
(1926­1984), or any of the decades within that era. Often
the insights they gained while driving or viewing Route 66
displays at museums or business establishments involved the
hardships of travel on Route 66 in earlier decades. Rob, for
example, mentioned this repeatedly:
You know, it was tough with the kind of [automotive]
technology they had then. They could only go 70 to
100 miles a day sometimes. Cars would break down.
It wasn't easy. I remember seeing pictures and stuff
about this in the Midpoint Café.
Later he noted that the trip must have been challenging in
earlier decades "because of the technology of the cars, and
you know how much your kidneys could stand because the
suspensions were so bad." Carol also mentioned her reflections
on early travel on Route 66 when she discussed visiting
an abandoned town and feeling as if she could imagine
how empty Route 66 must have felt along its sparsely populated
desert stretches, and how crossing such a vast country
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with limited automotive technology must have seemed a formidable
task. The Norwegian participants also commented
on the insight they said they had gained into the hardships of
travel in earlier decades, particularly regarding the difficulty
of crossing the Mojave Desert. There were also discussions
about the challenges of running a Route 66 business. They
were amazed at the risk that many Route 66 entrepreneurs
had taken, moving their families to new towns and investing
all their money to develop a business that was not guaranteed
to be a success, and they commented on how hard it
must have been for such people when Route 66 was
bypassed by interstate highways, as evidenced by the current
economically depressed state of many small towns
along the corridor.
Participants did praise certain historical aspects of Route
66, but not to the detriment of their present counterparts. For
example, they considered old highways like Route 66 to be
valuable for the unique type of driving experience they facilitate,
but found modern interstate highways to be valuable,
too. As Rob noted, "I'm grateful for the interstates when I
need to get somewhere, but Route 66 is something of value,
too." Ionis also mentioned that the creation of interstate
highways was a crucial factor in making Route 66 the relaxing
driving experience it is today; were it not for the development
of an alternative way to drive from Chicago to Los
Angeles, Route 66 would still be choked with traffic. Both
Arkin and Ike noted that interstate highways make it possible
for them to offer shorter Route 66 tours for people who
lack the time or money to take longer trips; these shorter
tours focus on riding particular segments of Route 66 and
take advantage of the speed and convenience of the interstates
to move between these segments. Arkin also compared
old Route 66 business establishments to more modern
travel services that have sprung up in Route 66 towns and
commented that each is valuable:
The older businesses give the Route its character, but
the newer ones are larger, which is good for us. We
can't stay as a group of 40 people in the smaller
motels, and sometimes we have to compromise and
eat fast food because there isn't enough time to stop
and go inside and sit down and eat for every meal . . .
sometimes we need things that are convenient and
quick. Then we can have more time when we stop at
some of the older businesses.
Thus, rather than viewing current systems as inferior to
their earlier counterparts and broadly rejecting them in favor
of a return to the past, participants seemed inclined to consider
the value of elements from both the past and the present
and to focus on the benefits derived from combining them.
Like those interviewed, the first author also feels she has
never come away from a trip on Route 66 feeling like it represented
an era of travel (or of life) that was easy and carefree
and superior to life today. Visiting the small museums
and old business establishments along the corridor, she has
seen the road represented in many ways. While it is often
linked with elements of the past that most Americans feel a
fondness for, such as the dramatic automobile designs of the
1950s and '60s, it is also often represented in ways that
reveal the darker side of travel in previous generations. For
example, several museums and businesses along Route 66
feature salvaged Burma Shave advertising signs, which
formerly lined the road in sets of three or four, offering highway
wisdom to tourists one line at a time. Many of these
signs are rather ominous in tone. One set, featured at a shop
and visitors' center in Hackberry, Arizona, reads, "Big
Mistake," "Many Make," "Rely on Horn," "Instead of
Brake." Another set, featured at a tiny museum in McLean,
Texas, reads "Hardly a Driver," "Is Still Alive," "Who
Passed on Curves," "At Seventy-Five." These signs speak
not of the joy and freedom involved in driving Route 66
when it was a commissioned highway, but of the dangers
inherent in barreling down a two-lane road at 70 miles an
hour in a car with none of the safety features we take for
granted today.
Additionally, the first author has noticed in her own
Route 66 travels that for every large display of James-Deanstyle
mannequins posing with red '57 Chevy convertibles
or settling in on chromed swivel-stools behind diner-style
lunch counters to inevitably order the Blue Plate Special,
there seems to be a community scrapbook or a barbershop
wall papered with letters and clippings that tell the story of
Route 66 through a mosaic of accounts written by people
who have lived along it, worked along it, traveled it, or simply
cared about it. The Devil's Rope & Route 66 Museum
in McLean Texas, for example, features such a scrapbook.
When she last stopped there, it was open randomly to a
memoir that had been submitted by a man who had worked
in a local garage, servicing the automobiles of Route 66
tourists. He noted that most of his customers were friendly,
but that some could never be satisfied, and told the story of
a (seemingly) "nice Christian school-teacher" whose car he
repaired, who refused to pay for the service because she
insisted that he had not adequately washed the outside of
her car after repairing it. Similarly, when the first author
last stopped at Angel Delgadillo's barbershop, in Seligman,
Arizona, a Mecca for many Route 66 aficionados because
of Angel's seminal role in the preservation of Route 66 and
his large collection of Route 66 news clippings and memorabilia,
she spent a bit of time reading some of the personal
memories he had recorded. She encountered one poignant
entry about how, as children, Delgadillo and his friends
would make fun of the "Oakies," farm families displaced by
the Dustbowl, as they came by in their rickety vehicles with
mattresses strapped to the roof, and how he later came to
realize how cruel this behavior was when he became old
enough to understand the gravity of their situation. To read
memoirs such as these is to connect with brief moments in
Route 66 history through the specific perspectives of people
who experienced these moments directly. Together the
memoirs create a patchwork that is threaded with the challenges,
accomplishments, and failures that characterized
Route 66, travel, and life in mid-twentieth century America,
as perceived by particular individuals. How this patchwork
is read and interpreted depends greatly on the one who is
doing the reading; however, a reader's attention would have
to be extremely selective to notice only the positive aspects
of life along Route 66 mentioned in these collections of
memoirs, as nostalgia theory would propose (Hewison
1987).
All in all, then, it does not seem surprising that neither the
authors, nor any of the participants, came away from their
Route 66 travels with a thoroughly glowing, uncritical view
of the past. By reading and observing information provided
at stops along the corridor; by experiencing directly the heat,
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JOURNAL OF TRAVEL RESEARCH 383
the wind, the motion of their vehicles, and the vastness of the
road; by meeting people who made a living from the road
because they took risks and worked hard and were lucky; and
by using their imaginations to bring these elements together
with their knowledge of technology and social structures in
earlier decades, they each gained insight into life along Route
66 that went far beyond an appreciation for Chevy convertibles
and sock-hops and that did not result in a judgment of
life 50 years ago as being better or easier or more desirable
than life today. Such findings echo the work of Prentice and
colleagues (Beeho and Prentice 1995, 1997; McIntosh and
Prentice 1999; Prentice, Witt, and Hamer 1998), who noted
that tourists did not leave heritage sites with a romanticized
view of the past, but rather, often recognized the hardships
encountered by individuals living in previous eras.
"It Was the Change of My Life": Embracing
Challenge and Personal Growth
Participants felt that their Route 66 travels had challenged
them to move beyond their ordinary life experiences
and reflect on a variety of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and
societal issues. They shared various stories of personal
growth achieved during their Route 66 travels.
For the Europeans, traveling Route 66 was liberating, in
that it provided an opportunity to interact with people from
other social backgrounds in a setting that deemphasized
income and status. At the outset of the trip, their interactions
felt awkward, but ultimately, they were able to transcend
their normal expectations and form diverse new friendships.
They also felt that the tour had been an exercise in teamwork;
learning to ride in formation and read and respond to
each other's movements was literally essential for survival.
The European participants also noted that touring Route 66
by motorcycle had been a significant challenge for several of
their travel companions, especially those who were not
accustomed to intense physical activity and spending time
outdoors. Riding a motorcycle for several hours a day, several
days in a row, in the wind and the sun and the rain, was
difficult and tiring, but in the end it left them with a powerful
sense of pride and accomplishment at having exceeded
the expectations of others and fulfilled a personal goal. The
American participants noted that their relationships with
their traveling companions had grown as a result of their
Route 66 trips. They discovered that they enjoyed the experience
of being alone with their family members for long
periods of time and that they felt closer to their families at
the trip's conclusion. Additionally, they reported that they
had grown from conversations they'd had with people they'd
met along Route 66, which had led them to reflect on their
lives.
Experiences of challenge, reflection, and personal
growth at a heritage site are clearly at odds with the nostalgia
critique's view of heritage tourism as a yearning for
escape in a simplified, glorified version of the past--as a
quest for comfort in the familiar and the pleasurable (Dann
1994; Hewison 1987). Similarly, the emphasis placed by
participants on novelty and serendipity conflicts with the
nostalgia critique's assessment of the desires of heritage
tourists. According to the nostalgia critique, a visit to a heritage
site would be exclusively easy, comfortable, and pleasurable.
It would confirm "the expected and cognitively
familiar" for its visitors (Graburn 1983, p. 20). It would not
encourage visitors to stretch beyond their comfort zones, to
engage in serious contemplation, or to question their priorities.
Visitors would leave with essentially the same understandings
with which they had entered, and such understandings
would have, in fact, been strengthened by the visit. For these
participants, this was not the case.
"Taking the Trip is My Story": Tourists as Active
Constructors of Experience
The final insight gained in this study challenges the
assumption of the nostalgia critique that heritage tourists are
passive recipients of information that has been shaped by
site managers, who have no goal other than to provide
tourists with "what they want to see" (Dann 1996, p. 220).
Based on the experiences of both authors, this assumption
felt intuitively wrong at the outset of this project, and indeed
it does not seem to explain the experiences of the participants.
Conversely, the recollections of Route 66 travels they
shared reveal them to have been highly active participants,
who reflected upon what they read, heard, and experienced
and integrated the knowledge they gained with their own life
experiences. This was first perceived when the participants
discussed the ways they had gained historical insight from
their trips. As noted previously, not only did they mention
historical information they had gained by reading books and
displays at sites along the corridor, but they also discussed
the ways the information had come alive for them as they
drove the road and experienced the landscape and the elements.
They actively integrated the formal information they
had received with their own firsthand experiences of the corridor
and thought they had come away from the trip with
increased historical insight. In short, they were active constructors
of their own learning experiences.
That personal growth was an outcome of traveling Route
66 also reveals the participants' active involvement in creating
the experience. For some of them, making the trip
became part of their identities because it represented a challenge
they had mastered or because it had been a major turning
point in their lives. For others, the trip was a way to
share a part of their identity. For example, Liv, a Norwegian
woman who had spent the first 14 years of her life in
America, said:
For most of [the participants], it's their first time
coming to America. I think the best part is that I feel
that sometimes they get to be my friends, and I'm
showing them my country. And this is really showing
them what the United States is. It's not just the really
big cities and the fuss and everything and the people
who are not interested in meeting you. It is this
stretch that is extremely interesting, and the people
are interesting, and I'm showing them my country.
Ultimately, it was Baer N. who best expressed the sense of
ownership the tourists seemed to have over their experiences
when he said, "It becomes personal. Yes, Route 66 has a
good history. That's the story of Route 66, but taking the trip
is my story. I did it."
In addition to conceptualizing tourists as passive, mindless
consumers of heritage sites, the nostalgia critique also
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views heritage providers as predominantly reactive, their
primary interest being to provide tourists with what they
want to see (Dann 1996). While it was beyond the scope of
this study to conduct formal interviews with Route 66 heritage
providers to explore the validity of this contention,
observations made during the first author's travels along
Route 66, along with the observations of the participants,
contradict such a notion. Instead, tourism service providers
on Route 66 seem to be very proactive, and what they do
seems to be very personally meaningful. For the service
providers, introducing tourists to Route 66 and taking care
of them seems to be a way of maintaining a family tradition,
sharing an aspect of their history and identity with interested
strangers, or seizing an opportunity to connect with new
people. For instance, the first author recalls one conversation
she had with a motel operator on Route 66 in Arizona, who
told her that his motel, a famous Route 66 landmark, had
been built by his parents, and he had been raised in it. He
and his siblings grew up and moved away, and eventually his
parents passed away, and their motel fell into disuse and disrepair.
When he returned to visit it and saw the state it was
in, he and his siblings decided to renovate it and operate it
as a tribute to their parents' hard work and sacrifice. His
reception desk features a scrapbook of the motel's history,
which includes old family photos, recent clippings from the
publicity it has received since it reopened, and letters from
people from all over the world who have stayed there, and,
if given the opportunity, he will talk for hours with guests
about his personal experiences and about what Route 66
means to him. Study participants reported similar experiences
with local people. Liv offered her impression of them:
"They're proud of Route 66. They were kind of thrilled that
a bunch of Norwegians were interested in it and wanted to
show us and share it with us." The experiences of Route 66's
service providers may thus constitute fertile ground for further
examinations of the meaning of the heritage tourism
process that extend beyond the nostalgia paradigm.
CONCLUSION
Through exploration of the narratives of nine Route 66
tourists, this study suggests that the visitor experience at this
heritage site is complex and multifaceted. It is comprised of
many elements, including gaining historical insight; partaking
in a particular type of driving experience; visiting unique
attractions deemed to be entertaining, noncommoditized,
and "nongeneric"; interacting with fellow travelers and with
local individuals encountered along the road; and experiencing
an "odyssey" of adventure, challenge, reflection, and
personal growth. These complex experiences are not sufficiently
explained by the rather narrow conceptualization of
heritage tourism experiences articulated by nostalgia theory,
one of the reigning theories in the realm of popular culture
heritage tourism literature. Therefore, while we are not arguing
that nostalgia theory is never useful for explaining any
tourist's experience at any heritage site, we suspect that it
may not be the most robust explanation, given its conceptual
problems, and given that it failed to account for the experiences
of each of the participants we interviewed at a heritage
site to which it is typically assumed to apply quite well.
It is important to note, however, that this study is limited in
several ways. One limitation involves the fact that interviews
were conducted with participants whose purpose for the trip
was specifically to travel Route 66 and who traveled it in its
entirety; many Route 66 visitors travel only portions of the
corridor as side trips. For this reason, the findings can only be
contextualized within the realm of participants whose visits fit
this pattern, rather than among those who choose to visit portions
of Route 66 as parts of trips that have other primary purposes.
Another limitation involves the fact that this study
specifically focused on individuals with strong feelings about
Route 66. The viewpoints of such individuals constituted a
valuable starting place because the intensity of their feelings
about the corridor permitted full and rich discussions about
the meaning of their experiences along it; however, their
views may not mirror those of others who visit the Route
more casually.
It is important to reiterate that the narrow focus of the
present study was intended to provide initial grounds for
exploring heritage tourism experiences and their meaning to
participants. What it reveals is that a need exists for new and
more complex ways of conceptualizing heritage tourism
experiences and their meaning to a variety of site visitors. For
the participants in this study, heritage tourism was very much
an embodied experience. Participants did not merely gaze at
historic sites and gain information from interpretive displays;
rather, they interacted with history through vivid visceral
experiences that directly engaged their bodies and senses
(e.g., driving/riding, consuming food). They also experienced
profound social interactions through their travels. In
turn, these experiences became the raw material from which
individual participants forged personal narratives of the journey.
They became the structure on which the participants
hung their interpretations about what the trip had meant to
them and the role it had played in their personal development.
Thus, the experience was about connecting with
history, not by romanticizing the past as a lost golden era, but
by choosing to participate in an ongoing, dynamic cultural
legacy, which is rooted in the past but continues to spur new
encounters that become part of the participants' biographies
in the present. In this case, heritage tourism, often portrayed
as a past-oriented endeavor, provided the raw material for
active self-making, a future-oriented pursuit.
While nostalgia theory did not encapsulate the experiences
of the participants in this study, several other extant
theoretical frameworks seem to hold much promise in this
regard. First, the work of Crang (1996), who analyzed the
phenomenon of historical reenactment, is highly valuable,
because it goes beyond typical discussions of heritage sites
to instead emphasize embodied heritage practices. His work
calls attention to interactions with heritage spaces and concepts
as potential performances of self-knowing, which
involve the body and emotions, as well as cognition.
Although, unlike the individuals Crang observed, the participants
in this study were not attempting to recreate an experience
of the past, they were engaging heritage and place in
an embodied and emotional way, and this process resulted in
perceptions of self-development.
Second, Noy's (2004) work on backpacker's narratives
of self-change is instructive, as it emphasizes adventure in
tourism as being not an end in itself, but rather, a springboard
for tourists' identity construction through the stories
of adventure they share with others. Noy argues that
although backpacking may be a particularly conducive form
of travel for the production of adventure and its subsequent
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narration, this process may be mirrored to a lesser degree in
other forms of tourism. Route 66 would seem to constitute a
clear example of how such processes can occur in a heritage
tourism setting. Noy's work thus provides a useful way of
conceptualizing the relationship between the experiences of
adventure and risk reported by the participants in this study
and their perceptions of personal growth, a relationship that
should be further explored in the heritage tourism context.
Third, Wang's (1999) work on authenticity should be
considered. In this seminal piece, Wang proposed the concept
of existential authenticity, a state of being in which
tourists feel more in touch with their "real selves" than they
feel during ordinary, everyday activities. He argued that
tourism is a form of escape from and/or resistance to individuals'
perceived oppression by particular conditions of
modernity. The instrumentalization and commodification of
human relationships characteristic of the capitalist mode
of production, the splitting and mediation of the self necessary
for participation in formally rationalized organizations that
characterize modern life, and the separation of humans from
nature embodied in the modern industrialized condition all
lead humans to feel alienated from the selves they would be
without the constraints and redefinitions imposed on their
lives by these systems. The liminal nature of tourism activates,
in some tourists, the feeling of escaping or overcoming
those constraints and feeling in touch with their whole, unified
selves, with their fellow humans, and with nature. Many
of the celebrated episodes described by participants, such as
becoming fully absorbed in sensory experiences while touring,
interacting with local people and places in ways that
defied the norms of the prevailing consumer culture in which
tourism encounters are typically situated, and bonding with
fellow tourists through the unusual conditions imposed by
the trip, seem to resonate strongly with Wang's (1999) notion
of existential authenticity. Future work on heritage tourism
should thus pursue better understandings of the relationship
between heritage sites/practices, lived experiences, and identity
development. Scholars should seek to expand the connections
between theoretical frameworks such as those
mentioned above and the experience of heritage tourism,
through explorations that include more diverse types of
tourists and consider a greater variety of heritage sites.
Finally, this study was also undertaken in the hope that it
would produce insights of practical value for those who are
active in the preservation and management of Route 66. In
the tradition of applied place attachment research (Williams,
Patterson, Roggenbuck, and Watson 1992), a better understanding
of visitors' Route 66 experiences could help agencies
and planners to more fully realize the noneconomic
value that is encoded in the structures, landscapes, and pavement
that comprise Route 66, as well as to offer some concrete
suggestions for the corridor's preservation and
management. It is important to note, however, that these
suggestions are based only on visitors' site meanings, and
not on the meanings Route 66 may hold for those who
live(d) and work(ed) along it or who have other personal
connections with it. Thus, we do not suggest that they
should be implemented directly, but rather taken into consideration
as part of a larger planning process. First, significant
sections of the road should be kept open to motorized
traffic, as the actual act of driving on the road seems to constitute
a key element of the experience. Route 66 managers
often debate this point, as many sections of the road are
rapidly deteriorating, and more of the old pavement could be
preserved if these sections were converted to biking/hiking
paths. The centrality of actually driving the road to Route 66
tourists' experiences, however, implies that a more appropriate
solution might be to remove samples of original/early
pavement when sections of the road become impassable and
preserve them in museums while repaving the roadbed to
keep it in a usable condition. Second, while some attractions
along the Route, such as the Big Texan Steak Ranch, will
likely remain profitable (and, hence, remain open), other
businesses, which do not share the Big Texan's advantage of
being located in a populous area, may not be able to generate
enough sales revenue to support themselves over the
long run. As their owners reach retirement or become unable
to continue to operate them, such businesses are often closed
or abandoned (Wallis 2001). Given that visiting these historic
businesses is an integral part of the experience of the
corridor, keeping them open is a more desirable option than
merely preserving them as nonoperating historic structures.
Finally, if Dedek's (2002) assessment of Route 66 promotional
materials as primarily relying on nostalgia is accurate,
then perhaps promotional strategies that more accurately
reflect the meanings of Route 66 would be more effective.
Perhaps focusing on the types of knowledge one can gain
while traveling Route 66, the unique type of driving experience
it offers, and the interesting attractions and people
located along it could better illustrate to potential visitors
the various possibilities for meaningful experiences that are
available along the corridor.
Above all, this paper has attempted to demonstrate that
tourists' own readings of heritage sites do not necessarily
match scholars' interpretations of them, and that this situation
has implications for both theory building and heritage site
management. It is hoped that this idea will stimulate further
research on tourists' perceptions of their experiences at heritage
sites, so that this dimension can be more fully incorporated
into theory generation and site management in the future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank Yaniv Belhassen for his
insightful suggestions and assistance on this work, and
David Hill for his help in facilitating data collection.
NOTE
1. The Hell's Angels are a notorious American motorcycle club, dating
from the 1960s, which has come to be associated with various illegal activities
in the popular imagination.
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