SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Picture yourself standing on a deserted stretch of asphalt, watching the golden sunset paint Arizona’s desert landscape. For photographer David Schwartz, that scene represents the culmination of a journey that began with a Depeche Mode song and led to creating stamps honoring America’s most famous highway.
Schwartz has traveled Route 66 an impressive 42 times across 20 years, documenting the legendary roadway that earned him the opportunity to photograph commemorative stamps celebrating the Mother Road’s 100th anniversary.
On Tuesday, the United States Postal Service launched eight new stamps highlighting notable locations along the historic route as it passes through each state, featuring classic diners, filling stations, and motor lodges — many now preserved or renovated — alongside stunning landscapes and endless horizons.
The famous highway carries deep historical significance, serving as an escape route during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, functioning as a crucial supply line in World War II, and later becoming the answer to America’s desire for adventure. This symbol of independence and movement has transformed into a living museum of American culture, rich with memories and glowing neon signs.
Back in 1988, teenage Schwartz and his closest friend planned a cross-country adventure after discovering Depeche Mode’s version of Bobby Troup’s 1946 classic “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66.” However, his mother prevented the trip, postponing his first experience with the open highway until 2004.
For Schwartz, this 2,448-mile stretch embodies a crucial element of America’s newly mobile 20th century, spanning from its establishment in 1926 until its official retirement in 1985. “Road trips, big cars, neon signs,” he describes. Despite losing its federal highway designation, large portions remain active and continue attracting adventure seekers and vacationers.
“So much to explore. You start here in Illinois on 66 and you’re cruising through prairie land,” Schwartz explained during a recent Springfield interview. “By the time you get out west, you’re in the desert or you’re in mountains through hairpin turns. It’s just an incredible journey and you just get such a beautiful slice of America going through it.”
After growing weary of retail management, Schwartz returned to school for photography studies and conceived the Route 66 stamp concept a decade ago. The Postal Service selected him for the assignment in 2023, and he remembers thinking, “Here is my moment to bring Route 66 to the masses.”
USPS stamp design art director Greg Breeding was developing a graphic featuring the road’s map when he encountered Schwartz’s photographs. The images were artistically captured rather than commercially polished.
“They’re as if you were there,” Breeding noted, “which makes them especially useful for stamps.”
The postal sheet includes 16 stamps, with two representing each Route 66 state. A ninth photograph functions as selvage, the border image around the stamp block. This features the empty Arizona highway scene, captured in 2023 near Seligman, Arizona, when Schwartz and his high school companion finally completed their delayed 35-year journey.
But what makes Route 66 special compared to modern interstate highways that eventually replaced it?
“You’d probably get run over,” Schwartz responded with humor.
“Interstates are designed to move traffic quickly. They cut through the sides of mountains, they do not follow the contour of the land…,” he continued. “On Route 66, you’re actually part of the landscape as you move through it. You feel the land as you’re traveling.”
Breeding and Schwartz avoided the highway’s most famous destinations, not only due to licensing challenges, but also to offer people a “fresh look,” according to Breeding. The stamps exclude people, he explained, partly to generate mystery rather than tourist destination feelings.
With this approach, the collection captures both ongoing business and roadside remnants that suggest their past vitality. Consider the Conoco Tower Station and U-Drop Inn in Shamrock, Texas, an Art Deco masterpiece decorated with neon that illuminates beautifully at twilight.
In Yucca, Arizona, Schwartz captured the deteriorating “Motel” sign under harsh midday sunlight, showing desert abandonment while revealing “the enduring pulse of the open road.”
His preferred image shows Illinois, featuring a friend’s 1929 Model A Ford traveling along the sole remaining hand-laid brick section of Route 66 in Auburn, near Springfield. The objective was creating an image that would transport viewers to Route 66’s beginning.
“We wanted to show it to be colorful. We wanted to show the quirkiness. We wanted to show the age,” Breeding explained. “It’s like a sort of show, the idea that Route 66 is a living history of the United States, from the past to the present.”
Schwartz expressed amazement that stamps featuring his photography will “travel all over the United States and end up in people’s mailboxes.”
“I hope they really inspire people to get out there and travel the road and support the Mom and Pop businesses and keep Route 66 alive for another 100 years,” he added.
