Route 66 Goes on the Run

November 11, 1926. The country’s state highway officials meet to give America’s roads numbers, and a patchwork of dirt, gravel and wooden planks running from Chicago to Los Angeles becomes Route 66. Two years later, promoter C.C. Pyle sends 199 runners down it on a 3,422-mile race to New York, with a traveling carnival behind them. Among them are Andy Payne, a Cherokee farm kid trying to save his family’s land, and Eddie Gardner, a Black runner from Seattle heading into the Jim Crow South. How did a footrace nicknamed the “Bunion Derby” turn a road on a map into an American icon? Special thanks to our guests: Keith Austin, Historic Consultant for Cherokee Nation Business, and Chuck Kastner, author of Race Across America: Eddie Gardner and the Great Bunion Derbies. To stay updated on all things HISTORY This Week, sign up at historythisweekpodcast.com. Have thoughts or questions? Email us at [email protected]. Sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes at htwpod.com.