name “Bloody 66.� In 1939, a total of 1,810 vehicles were counted in a 24 hour period near Rolla. By March of 1941, that number had risen to between 6,300 and 7,000. Huge traffic jams developed between the Frisco rail head at Newburg and the base. It was reported that convoys carrying airplane fuselages between Tulsa and St. Louis took an entire day to make it through Devils Elbow and Hooker. During the first nine months of 1941, 54 people died in crashes and 454 were injured on Route 66 in Phelps, Pulaski and Laclede Counties. The toll included a fiery crash near Hazelgreen on August 10, 1941 that killed nine soldiers and a civilian truck driver. By then, work was already underway on a new four-lane Route 66. An upstart St. Louis construction firm, Fred Weber Construction, got the contract. Federal money for road construction and materials were scarce, but the Highway 66 project was considered vital to the war effort. The work included blasting a 93 feet deep and 86 feet wide cut through a solid Dolomitic limestone ridge just west of Hooker. Steam drills created holes in the rock, and workers placed dynamite in the holes to blast the ridge apart. Over 186,000 cubic yards of solid rock, weighing 300,000 tons, was removed. Terracing was used for the first time on such a highway project to keep massive boulders from crushing cars below. For each 30 feet of vertical wall, a 15 foot wide shelf was constructed to catch the rocks. When it was completed in 1943, Hooker Cut was the largest rock cut on a U.S. highway and the first major divided four-lane section of Route 66 in rural Missouri. The design included angled curbing instead of shoulders, designed to channel rainwater to drains. But those curbs often caused vehicles to overturn. The project also included a beautiful concrete arch bridge with no height restrictions to carry the new highway over the Big Piney. The new bridge and Hooker Cut became a popular subject for postcards. Upon completion of the new roadway, the twisting and scenic route through Devils Elbow was designated as State Road V. In the 1930s, plans had been unveiled for several dams in the Ozarks, including one at Arlington that would have inundated Devils Elbow. So the original roadway was never paved with high grade concrete below the proposed water level. The traveler will notice that the regular type pavement resumes once the roadway climbs the steep hill west of Devils Elbow and approached a scenic overlook. Fortunately, the dam projects were put on hold during the war and were never built.
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May / June 2012
Story and photos contributed by Joe website at: www.66postcards.com