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Americans, especially in smaller towns, did not always have access to paved roads.

It might be the epitome of quaint today, but Route 66 was groundbreaking when it was established 100 years ago.

It's Friday, May 29th, and this is here and now anytime, from NPR and WBUR Boston.

I'm Chris Bentley.

Today on the show, we continue our series 25 at 250, looking at 25 objects from the Smithsonian Institution that helped tell the story of America.

That includes a trailblazing folk record, subtitled Music for the Struggle by Asians in America.

People had this idea that Asians were foreign.

They were different from us.

They were from cultures that were distinct and maybe at odds with American culture.

This is only a decade and a half after Japanese Americans from the West Coast were incarcerated in camps during World War II.

But first, long before interstate highways stitched the country together, there was the

mother road. Route 66 crossed through eight states, bringing customers

to gas stations and convenience stores, Indian trading posts, and roadside attractions that

breathed life into hundreds of small towns. It was fully paved in the 1930s and became a migration

route for poor farmers fleeing the Dust Bowl for a new start in

California. Route 66 was not the nation's first long-distance highway. It's not the longest,

and definitely not the busiest. But it became the most famous, thanks to a marketing campaign

that jumped over into pop culture. It's part of books by

John Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac, and of course inspired the 1946 song made famous by

Nat King Cole. A chunk of what's sometimes called America's Main Street lives in the

Smithsonian's collection. And as we highlight 25 objects in that collection that tell the story of America,

...