Which U.S. president was in office when Route 66 was established in 1926?

Calvin Coolidge was president when U.S. Route 66 was established in 1926.

The United States Numbered Highway System was created in 1926 to organize major roads under a national system of route numbers. Route 66 was one of the original highways in that network, running generally from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California. Coolidge, a Republican from Vermont, served as the 30th president from 1923 to 1929.

Route 66 was not built entirely as a new road in 1926. Its designation combined and coordinated existing roads and local alignments across Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Improvements and realignments continued for decades.

The highway’s cultural fame came later, especially through migration during the Dust Bowl era, John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, popular music, and postwar automobile tourism. Coolidge is therefore connected to Route 66 through the highway’s formal birth, not through its later popular image or construction of every mile.