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George Mason University. Libraries. Special Collections Research Center
Fenwick Library, MS2FLAmanda Brent
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"California or Bust" travel scrapbook, C0503, Special Collections Research Center, George Mason University Libraries.
Purchased by Lynn Eaton from Jordan Antiquarian Books on February 2, 2020.
Processing and finding aid completed by Amanda Brent in June 2022.
The advent of the Interstate Highway System in the United States, built under the Eisenhower administration, made automobile travel within the contiguous United States more accessible than ever before. In June 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which vastly expanded funding for the project.
Route 66 was the United States' first all-weather highway. Built in 1926, the highway was very popular due to its shortening of travel time from the Midwest (Chicago, IL) to the West (Los Angeles, CA). Route 66 roadtrips were a popular American pastime, until the highway was decommissioned in 1985.
Content Warning: One of the photograph descriptions in this album contains a racial slur.
Black scrapbook album created circa August 1956 to document a trip from New York to California and other Midwest, West, and Southwest states taken by a group of five women friends. The trip lasted from August 4, 1956 - August 27, 1956, with the women visiting Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, California, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Illinois, and Ohio. The women likely drove on the famous Route 66.
The scrapbook contains black and white photographs pasted onto the pages with commentary and information written in white ink. The first page reads:
California or Bust -
Mary Harris - Navigator?!, Chief waker-upper + coffee maker [Likely the compiler of the scrapbook]
Margaret Garrison - owner of bus -, champion zipper burster, speedqueen
Shirley Limburg - tire changer extraordinaire, a salesman's dream
Betty Powell - snaphappy, connoisseur of seafoods
Mariajean Lanza - "Mrs. Malaprop" - "Miss Route 66 of 1956" - the gambler
This is a single item collection.
The Special Collections Research Center also holds the Vacation trip in the new Chevrolet scrapbook, the Sallie Montgomery travel diary, the American voyage photograph albums, and many other collections related to travel of the United States.
The pages in the scrapbook are acidic and brittle, and all have come loose from their original binding. Care needed when handling.
"History and Significance of US Route 66[.]" National Park Service. Accessed June 8, 2022. https://ncptt.nps.gov/rt66/history-and-significance-of-us-route-66/.
"History of the Interstate Highway System[.]" U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration. Accessed June 8, 2022. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/history.cfm.