Many of us who live in West Central Missouri probably don't think about it much. Yet, Highway 50 is much more than a way to get into Kansas City without driving to Interstate 70 at Marshall or Higginsville Junction. Highway 50 is how we get to work or from town to town in West Central Missouri. Yet, much like the more well-known Route 66, it was a great way to go coast to coast in the age before the interstates.

Highway 50 Goes Coast To Coast

Highway 50, or U.S. 50, goes coast to coast. From east to west, it starts in Ocean City, Maryland, at Maryland Route 528 (MD528) and runs to Interstate 80 in West Sacramento, California. Before 1972, U.S. 50 could get you to San Francisco near the Pacific Ocean via Stockton, the Altamont Pass, and the Bay Bridge.

According to Wikipedia, U.S. 50 runs primarily through the West's rural areas, deserts, and mountains. However, it does pass through some midwestern cities like Kansas City, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, Ohio. Out east, the route takes you through the Appalachian Mountains before heading through Washington, D.C., and through Maryland to Ocean City.

Highway 50 Has A Couple of Nicknames

In July 1997, Time Magazine devoted an entire issue to U.S. 50. They waxed poetic about the road's history and what it means to America and used it as a guide to ask questions about what was holding us together and pulling us apart. The title of that issue is The Backbone of America, which has become one of the road's nicknames. The Time article can be read here.

In 1986 Life Magazine dubbed U.S. 50 in Nevada The Loneliest Road In America. According to Travel Nevada, that article claimed there were "no points of interest" along the route and "warned" readers not to risk driving it unless they were confident of their driving skills—a point Travel Nevada contests.

Highway 50's Highest Point

According to Wikipedia, in Colorado, the U.S. 50's route leaves Interstate 70 upon entering the state and heads southeast through Grand Junction and into Southern Colorado. Once there, the road climbs to its highest elevation of 11,312 feet over the Rocky Mountains and Monarch Pass, where it crosses the Continental Divide. That's a couple hundred feet higher than the Eisenhower Tunnel that carries Interstate 70 under the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains.

The History of Highway 50

To borrow a phrase from the Travel Facts Facebook page, when you're on U.S. 50, you're literally driving along a piece of history. Time Magazine's expose about U.S. 50 says, "It is a history book, surveyed by George Washington, planted by Johnny Appleseed, portaged by Daniel Boone." More practically, Road Trip USA says you'll experience Silicon Valley, then travel across the Wild West frontier of the mid-1800s and through areas that Daniel Boone and countless others pioneered in the 1700s before Its eastern terminus drops you near some of the oldest colonial-era landscapes in the United States.

Perhaps the best way to sum up U.S. 50 is to quote Missourian William Least Heat-Moon, a noted American travel writer and historian of English, Irish, and Osage ancestry. He is the author of Blue Highways, a chronicle of a three-month road trip in 1978 after losing his teaching job and separating from his first wife. He writes about Highway 50:

"For the unhurried, this little-known highway is the best national road across the middle of the United States."

For a slice of history and an adventure where you'll meet many people like us, U.S. 50 might be the drive to cleanse the soul and clear the mind. I like that.