Route 66 didn't die of natural causes

Roads don't die when the traffic leaves. They die when the signs come down. In 1985, a committee in Washington voted to decertify US 66, and overnight a 2,400-mile main street became a series of disconnected county roads with nothing to put on a postcard.

The traffic had been declining for decades; the interstates saw to that. But decertification did something the interstates couldn't: it removed the name. And the name, it turned out, was the business.