John Steinbeck called U.S. Route 66 the “Mother Road” in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath.
In the novel, Route 66 carries the Joad family and other displaced Oklahoma and Great Plains residents west toward California during the Dust Bowl migration. Steinbeck’s phrase gave the highway one of its most enduring nicknames and linked it permanently with migration, hardship, and hope.
The novel was published during the period when Route 66 was still an active U.S. highway. Its literary description helped turn a numbered road into a national cultural symbol. Steinbeck’s wording is sometimes confused with later promotional names such as “Main Street of America,” but “Mother Road” is specifically associated with The Grapes of Wrath.
Steinbeck won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Grapes of Wrath won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1940 and remains the best-known literary work connected with Route 66.