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Tulsa was an oil city at the time and was known as the oil capital.

It is bordered by the Arkansas River, an important tributary of the Mississippi River, which divides the city in two:

The urban area is on the east side of the river, while the oil development area is mostly on the west side of the river.

Connecting the two sides of the river is a wooden bridge located on 11th Street.

It is not known when the wooden bridge was originally built, but in 1915, the bridge was already dilapidated, not to mention cars, even pedestrians are not safe to walk on, which brings great safety hazards to the work and life of city residents.

The Tulsa City Hall has always promised to rebuild the bridge, but has not been able to act on it for a variety of reasons.

When Avery took office, he made rebuilding the bridge his priority.

Finally, in 1915, the new 11th Street Bridge was completed and opened to traffic.

Under the rave reviews, Avery had a new idea:

Since it's nice to see the 11th Street Bridge connect the two ends of the city, why not build a highway that connects Tulsa to the rest of the city?

There was a lot of support for this idea, because at that time, the oil and ancillary products produced in Tulsa were mainly shipped to the Great Lakes industrial area, which was relatively expensive, and the construction of a highway connecting Tulsa and Chicago had a great effect on the local economy of Tulsa.

In addition, between Tulsa and Chicago, there was already a trail that was once used as a military road, and as long as it was widened and leveled, it could meet the needs of the people.

At Avery's instigation, the Chicago-Tulsa route was included in the first new numbered highways, and its western end was extended to Los Angeles.

After several disputes, the road did not receive the number "Route 60" that Avery wanted, but instead received the number 66.

So the Route 66 Association was formed in Tulsa and began paving roads based on the 11th Street Bridge.

After Route 66 was basically finalized, in order to attract more travelers and boost the economy of various places along the route, including Tulsa, Avery tried his best to market the road.

He bought a lot of space in newspapers and magazines to advertise Route 66.

The following year, he came up with a new approach:

Organize an extreme run across the North American continent and have athletes run along the fledgling Route 66 from Los Angeles to Chicago and then to New York to gain worldwide attention and raise awareness of Route 66.

This extreme challenge really attracted a lot of attention, and it was hyped up by the media and followed throughout the whole process.

More than 200 runners, many of whom were well-known long-distance runners at the time, and more than 50 made it to Madison Square in New York, with Andy, a Cherokee from Oklahoma, taking first place with 573 hours (an average of 6 miles per hour).

While the runners who completed the course were awarded the title of heroes, Route 66 also stood in the spotlight for the first time.

Avery continued his efforts and held the event again two years later.

In the decades that followed, the event was repeated many times and earned the proper name Bonnean Derby.

For him, the purpose of hosting the event was achieved, and Route 66 became a household name.

But what he didn't expect was that it was not this extreme sport that really established the place of Route 66 in the history of the ugly country, but the Great Depression that followed.

Just after the second Bonnean Derby, the hidden dangers of industrial take-off and economic prosperity erupted.

On October 29, Black Tuesday unexpectedly arrived, and the stock market crashed on Wall Street in New York, and the biggest economic crisis in history – the Great Depression – dealt a blow to the American capitalists who were soaring in the "Roaring Twenties".

It also caught the "lost generation" who grew up after World War I and looked forward to the future by surprise and became even more confused.

In fact, the fuse of the Great Depression was planted long ago, and at a time when industrialization led to the prosperity of all walks of life, the middle class in the ugly country was full of security, and the money in its hands was spent without moderation, and then it began to become popular to borrow and spend, and the deficit in the middle class's account continued to rise.

At the same time, the spread of mechanization and technological innovation are gradually reducing jobs.

Unemployed ordinary workers are willing to pay lower wages in exchange for job opportunities, which over time lowers average wages, reduces purchasing power, and makes it impossible to sell the products produced in the factory.

The ills of the ugly banking community and the Hoover administration's laissez-faire approach to the market are also secretly exacerbating the crisis.

At first, these crises were obscured by the façade of prosperity in all walks of life, until the end of October 1929, when all the undercurrents broke through and completely shattered the vanity of the ugly economy.

On Black Tuesday, the savings of many ugly people were wiped out, and a large-scale wave of bankruptcies and unemployment followed, nearly 30% of families lost their income, and ugly society fell to the brink of collapse.

Homeless people gathered to erect improvised shacks in the city's vacant lots, naming them "Hoover Village" as a noir to Hoover's promises of a better future.

Some even went to the forest to set fires just to get themselves a job as firefighters.

Later, Ronaldo succeeded Hoover as the new boss.

After he took office, he implemented the "Xiao Luo New Deal" to save the economy of the ugly country.

He took a series of measures, such as using Keynesian theories to strengthen the government's macroeconomic regulation and control of the economy; depreciating the dollar to stimulate exports;

Banks were ordered to close down to regain their reputation, and so on.

But one of the most important initiatives is aimed at the unemployed in society: cash-for-work, the construction of infrastructure and large-scale projects across the country to provide jobs, as a way to increase people's consumption levels and thus stimulate the economy.

There were many projects built during the New Deal, the most famous of which was the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River.

In fact, construction of the Hoover Dam began in 1931, before he came to power, with tens of thousands of people rushing to Arizona to compete for the 5,000 jobs.

The way these people got to Arizona was Route 66, and many people couldn't afford to pay the fare, so they even walked along Route 66 from Chicago (and even the East Coast) to Arizona.

People chose Route 66 not only because the Hoover Dam was built so close to Route 66, but also because of the unique orientation of the highway.

Most of the roads in the ugly country are laid out horizontally and vertically, while Highway 66 is diagonally inserted into most of the ugly country.

Because of its route, it intersects with most other major highways, so it was a natural choice for immigrants to the west.

The 200-meter-high gravity dam uses a total of 2.48 million cubic meters of cement, which is also used as raw materials for the construction site via Route 66.

It can be said that Route 66 provided the necessary path for the construction of the Hoover Dam and also contributed greatly to the economic recovery of the towns along the way during the Great Depression.

In addition to the Hoover Dam, there are many other jobs in the West, such as several national parks in California that rebuilt roads and other infrastructure around the time of the Great Depression, and Route 66 as a migration route for workers involved in these projects.

During the construction of the Hoover Dam, workers often traveled to a small town 30 kilometers away from the dam for recreation.

Originally established as a stronghold by Mormons in 1855, the town is deep in the desert and lacks water.

In 1905, it was developed into a small town by railroad workers.

But after the railway was built, most of the workers left, because it was too arid, too remote, and without even basic electricity, and uninhabitable.

But for the workers who built the dam, it was the only place of recreation within a 100-kilometer radius.

They flocked to bring cables and water canals to the town.

The workers' entertainment in the town was also very simple, usually getting together to play cards and gamble.

In an effort to attract more workers to the desert, the state of Nevada, where the town is located, passed laws legalizing gambling.

When the Great Depression passed, many new merchants took a fancy to the town and opened many high-end casinos in the area, making the town a city of endless nights of revelry.

This town was later known as Las Vegas. The Hoover Dam provides a steady stream of electricity to Las Vegas, and the reservoir behind the dam brings valuable water to Las Vegas.

Just as the Great Depression sent workers to Route 66 to the west in search of new jobs, they were followed by another group of people.

The group walked on Route 66 because of a natural disaster that befell the Great Plains in the central part of the country, the famous environmental disaster in the history of the country, the Smoke and Dust Bowl Incident, also known as the Black Storm Event.

Underneath the Great Plains in the middle of the country, there is a huge aquifer - the High Plains Aquifer.

This aquifer covers a large area, has abundant water, and is not deep from the surface, which is an important source of water for agriculture in the central part of the country.

However, such a unique agricultural water source cannot withstand the overuse of people.

As the water level drops due to over-pumping, the soft sand that had been soaked in the aquifer is no longer covered by water, and is lifted into the air with a single blow of the wind.

At the same time, due to the unscientific reclamation and cultivation since the westward expansion, the vegetation on the Great Plains has been completely destroyed, and without the confinement of plant rhizomes, the soil will soon lose water and turn into dust.

By the 30s, the surface of the area had become desertified on a large scale, eventually forming a long-lasting super dust storm under the influence of high winds.

The super sandstorm continued to rage in the central part of the Ugly Country for 10 years, and the entire central Great Plains and the eastern foothills of Rocky Mountain were affected.

Several states in the hardest-hit areas often lose their fingers during the day, and the dust blown into the air even drifts to the east coast and maple leaf country with the atmospheric circulation.

Because of this, that decade is known as the "Dirty Thirties."

Among them, there was severe convective weather in the corridor area of western Oklahoma, and after a series of chain reactions, a "perfect storm" was born:

Centered in western Oklahoma, a superstorm belt with a diameter of more than 1,000 kilometers and a height of about 3 kilometers has emerged.

An estimated 350 million tonnes of sediment are thrown into the air on the Central Great Plains, and even as far away as New York, Boston and Atlanta are dark during the day.

This day is known as "Black Sunday", and the storm, which lasted for three days, is known as "Black Storm".

The storm devastated agriculture in the Central Great Plains.

Strong winds and sandstorms have destroyed at least 5 inches of soil on the ground, and in many areas the last remaining arable soil on the ground has been completely destroyed.

In the aftermath of the storm, at least 10 million acres of farmland were destroyed and more than 5 million tons of wheat were lost.

In Oklahoma and the hardest-hit areas nearby, many farmers have completely desertified their land, making it impossible to farm.

They had no choice but to leave their homes and move to other places.

The bustling eastern regions were hit by the Great Depression, and there were simply no extra jobs for them.

So the best option for them is to head west along Route 66 to sunny California, just outside of the Sandstorm Zone.

Because of its unique geographical conditions, California is home to both vegetables and fruits.

When these people came to California, they were sent to work on fruit farms.

Because they came penniless, of low status, and because most of them came from Oklahoma, where Indians were predominant, they were nicknamed the Ohankees.

At the time, Californian writer John Steinbeck gained insight into the plight and hardships of the fugitives, and used them as a backdrop for literary works such as "Between Mice and Men" and "The Grapes of Wrath."

Among them, "The Grapes of Wrath" has been hailed as one of the greatest of the 20th century in the ugly country.

Because the book was too influential and the social problems it reflected were too acute, some regions once listed it as a banned book.

Later, under the influence of the book, the Ugly Parliament was forced to pass a bill to fund farmers affected by sandstorms.

The book won Steinbeck a Pulitzer Prize, and "Between Mice and Men," written in the same setting, later won him the Nobel Prize in Literature.

These two books not only expose the unfair treatment of those who have fled the famine, but also make Route 66 popular again.

"The Grapes of Wrath" tells the story of an Oklahoman farming family who flees California after being bankrupt due to the Great Depression and sandstorm crisis, and many of the episodes take place along Route 66.

Steinbeck believes that Route 66 shows desperate farmers a way to survive in a dimly lit sandstorm, so he calls Route 66 the "Mother Road."

After the book won the award and was remade into a film, the title "Mother's Road" was officially given to Route 66.

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