Group wants to commemorate Route 6

IOWA CITY (AP) ? As a kid, Rex Brandstatter's parents would send him out of the house with one simple instruction.

"They would tell me, 'You can go anywhere, but you can't cross the highway,'" said Brandstatter, a lifelong Coralville resident.

The highway was U.S. Route 6, at that time a major conduit bringing cars from all corners of the U.S. through Brandstatter's small town in the 1950s.

Today, Brandstatter, 63, is among a group of Iowans and other preservationists nationally working to plant historical markers along the original Route 6, which cut through Iowa City and Coralville when it was completed in the 1930s as the nation's longest highway.

The Iowa City Press-Citizen reports the U.S. Route 6 Tourist Association's Iowa Division ? one of 14 states along the highway's path from Massachusetts to California ? has begun marking segments of the old route, and it hopes to soon add Johnson County's stretch.

The idea is to commemorate that golden age of two-lane travel and bolster tourism in towns the interstate bypassed decades ago.

"There's definitely a growing interest in following the old two-lane highways," said Dave Darby, executive director of the 12-year-old national organization's Iowa Division. "You can drive across Iowa in about four and a half hours on the interstate and just be bored out of your mind. It's just nothing but corn and boredom. Or you can take a little extra time and see something and enjoy your drive."