Nat King Cole sang about getting your kicks on Route 66. Country singer Steve Earle got lost on "Nowhere Road.’’ And AC/DC took that "Highway to Hell.’’
But Bryan Farr spent some of his happiest days driving U.S. Route 20 across the whole blessed country and now wants to "promote and preserve’’ America’s longest highway.
In 2010, the self-described "road geek’’ drove his Nissan Xterra 3,365.3 miles from Kenmore Square in Boston to Newport, Ore. – and back - and found "America the way it used to be.’’
Driving down Route 20 on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, Farr rhapsodized about the coast-to-coast highway that starts by winding through some of the most historic sites in MetroWest.
"Driving Route 20 across the country I mostly traveled beautiful rural roads. Almost everyone I encountered was friendly, welcoming and happy to meet me. It felt like the way America must have been in the 1920s,’’ he said.
Farr has recently formed The Historic US Route 20 Association, a nonprofit organization "dedicated to preserving the cultural importance’’ of a road that might have seen better days and "promoting the economic development’’ of communities along the way.
He’s established the core of the organization with four other Route 20 lovers spread across the country and built a website and a Facebook page that has more than 100 friends. He’s also made cool T-shirts and can rattle off more facts and trivia about Route 20 than you could find in a AAA road guide.
A 36-year-old Pennsylvania native who majored in meteorology at University of North Carolina-Asheville and later spent a year atop Mount Washington measuring the temperature and wind, Farr took his first road trips in his parents’ Oldsmobile.
Now a Boston resident, he explained that Route 20’s origins can be traced back to an American Indian trail early colonists used to travel westward in the 1630s and was later called the Boston Post Road as laid out by Benjamin Franklin to carry mail from New York to Boston.
In the Revolutionary War, Farr said, Henry Knox, who became the young nation’s first secretary of war, directed ox-drawn sleds carrying captured cannon down the road in winter to Dorchester Heights where they helped blast the British out of Boston.
Farr discusses Route 20’s public landmarks and less-remembered points of interest with the precision of a historian and the passion of a tour guide.
Driving from Waltham to Marlborough, he pointed out milestones and oddities that many drivers likely pass without noticing.
The shield-shaped Route 20 sign in Waltham is a virtual one-of-a-kind in an age of standardized signs. Stopping at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Weston, he said the town diverted the original Route 20 for a 1.5 miles so it would avoid carrying traffic through the downtown.
In front of the First Parish in Wayland Unitarian Universalist church, he stopped by a plaque fixed to a grist stone commemorating the state’s renaming Route 20 the George Washington Memorial Highway in 1932 to recognize his trip to Boston to assume command of the Continental Army.
At the Wayside Inn, Farr said former owner Henry Ford paid to have the original Route 20 re-routed away from the historic site to protect its foundation from vibrations caused by truck traffic.
Even before meeting Farr, Dave Pierce who lives in tiny Chester in the Berkshire foothills, thought Route 20 deserved the title of "America’s road.’’
"I’ve said that for a long time,’’ said Pierce, president of the nonprofit Chester Foundation, which was instrumental in preserving a historic railroad station. "People get all worked up about Route 66. It’s like the Erie Canal. That’s not even a usable highway.’’
Noting the Mass. Pike bypassed Chester, Pierce called Route 20 "the highway of the past’’ that "will carry travelers "to a whole different experience, a whole different pace of life.’’
"Route 20 follows the contours of the land and lets us preserve the rural quality of our lives,’’ he said. "If we were on one of those six-lane monstrosities we’d probably have a 30-foot Mobil sign in our downtown.’’
In Newport, Ore., Sachiko Otsuki, archivist for the Lincoln County Historical Society, said a simple sign "Begin East 20’’ marks the road’s beginning 10 blocks from the Pacific Ocean.
While the highway has helped Newport develop into a modern resort community, 50 years ago its winding roads and occasional landslides led to a popular bumper sticker, "Pray for me. I drive HWY 20.’’
Back east, Farr is already planning a springtime cross country drive along Route 20 with a simple goal.
"I call it the great American road trip,’’ he said. "I want to get people in every state along the way involved in keeping it a reality.’’
To learn about Farr’s organization, visit www.historicus20.com.
