that we also know is that if she knew how to ask for help, she was going to be better off than those people who did not. let's end there, and we will continue on friday. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] interested in american history tv? /isit our website, c-span.org history. you can preview programs and watch college lectures, archival films, and more. american history tv at c-span.org/history. >> c-span, where history unfold daily. c-span was created as a

public service by america's cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> for nearly 60 years, route 66 campbell -- ferry travelers across the country. drivers may have been getting their kicks on route 62. the story in -- historian john sellers shares that story with us. road, fora for a good a good, easily traveled, easily identified highway across the country came with the very first motorcars. burgeoning this building of automobiles that every small town was filling out these roads, and the demand to be able to open up a map and go

from place to place on a map was just so strong that the government said we are going to start this deal of numbered highways. known as thed was birthplace of route 66. >> absolutely. springfield had a man named john whoodruff, an attorney, would come near is an attorney for the railroad and was entrepreneur. he was an absolute genius marketing and making things happen. he was one of the committee of people that were pushing for this highway. they wanted a number of the highway to be 60, and they were originally awarded that number. and then, through some politicking with the governor of kentucky and so on and so forth, that number was changed. and that 60 designation went to

another road and they were offered the number 62, which didn't suit them at all. andought that was demeaning that they were second-best and so on. here, anddruff, being cyrus avery being a rotarian, one thing led to another. he came up to tells of our rotary convention in april of 1926. they got together with some of the other people on the committee about this highway and came up with the idea that 66 sounded good. it was catchy and looked good on paper. they sent a telegram from springfield, asking that they be given the number 16 -- 66. and they did. and the rest is history. , iconicecame route 66 and folklore and in music and so on. just because of the meaning in springfield.

we feel like we are the birthplace of her and 66, because the meeting of the telegram were set from here in our city. >> how is it that woodruff got so involved in the establishment of this? >> he was a tremendous visionary. his vision was that route 66 would go across the country east to west and that would be a north-south thoroughfare that would run from the tip of south america all the way to canada through springfield. 60 five hwy is as close as it got. highway was as close to the got. the entire country and continent would be connected without highway. now we are turning on the st. louis street here at the rail avon. -- rail haven.

it's an iconic motel, it's been here since 1938 and this is the original old sign up here for the rail avon. this is on st. louis street, which has been widened as well as anything else. but still has some buildings that were current to that time. developer here a in the city. did you benefit from this coming through? built buildings were beneficial to the city, but also, with a forward thinking idea of how they would be involved in making the city better. he built the kentwood arms hotel with the idea that it would be a attractivewas very to motorists.

most hotels had very little, if any parking. went into thed hotel. the kenwood head parking available, had a beautiful big front lawn, and was a motor hotel, an upscale hotel for motorists. and builds it right on route 66 as was ready to be there that motor traffic began to come through. side of the upscale what became a little motor courts and kevin cordes of that time that were built, just popped up like mushrooms everywhere. they wanted the city to really feel like they were part of the highway. for those customers to come from far away to stop and do business in those communities. >> where are we now? >> we are on college street.

the road would come through on st. louis street to the square, when he came out the other side of the square, it was a different name. college street headed out west of the city in this part of this has the road a lot more like it was 50 or 60 years ago, it's not been as upgraded, but they are beginning to start now to do some upgrading and so on on this part of the road. it is still the little two lanes because traffic is not as heavy over here. they put this will roadside park in to commemorate the mother road area. over time, it will develop and be a bigger part of it. 1982 is when they decommissioned the highway. wasident eisenhower absolutely dazzled by the audubon's in germany during the

war. about the ability to travel place to place a limited access highway. when he became president in 1952, that was one of his first things that he was wanted to start doing, was developing a series of limited access highways that would get military bings from point a to point in a quicker fashion. and along that, it took regular car traffic as well. 1956, he was well on his way to building the interstate highway system. >> springfield has interstate run through here. >> just north of the interstate 44. through?id that come >> parts of it were shared between 66 and 44 until they decommissioned 66.

it follows the same route as 66 from st. louis right down to springfield and onto the west. routetty much parallels 66 without going through the cities, going through the middle of the towns. most communities benefited from the highway coming through. springfield was a proactive piece of the naming, a proactive piece of the administration, of the association, much more heavily involved in the early years of the highway and the communities that got the benefit of it without any real effort other than saying you can come through my town. whereas springfield had people in workingolved through the naming and so on and so forth. >> the cities tour staff

travel to springfield to learn about its rich history. learn more at c-span.org/ citiestour. you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. >> up next, university of texas at austin history professor daina ramey berry discusses the buying and selling of slave cadavers to medical institutions, and african-american grave robbers who supplied the trade. she explores the concept of "soul value," which she describes as enslaved people developing their own sense of internal value. she is the author of "the price for their pound of flesh: the value of the enslaved from womb to grave in the building of a nation." the 50 minute event is part of a symposium on slavery cohosted by the university of virginia and the slave dwelling project.