John Steinbeck wrote of the dust bowl immigrants in his controversial book "The Grapes of Wrath" in 1939. No one knew of the impact this story would have on Route 66 when it first came out. It established the mythical Joad family in the American psyche, connecting them with the highway itself. It chronicled a vast migration along a road of flight. Steinbeck described Route 66 as "the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership . . . they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight".