In 1967, John Bulmer travelled America's fabled highway. There are longer highways in the U.S., and older ones, too, but no phrase sparks visions of road trips and dreams of blacktop ribbons racing to the horizon quite like "Route 66." The Mother Road, as it's long been known, opened in 1926 and rolled for more than 2000 miles across eight states, from northern Illinois to southern California — a route British photographer John Bulmer and writer Philip Norman travelled on assignment for the Sunday Times of London in October 1967.
Bulmer recently shared memories from that trip, along with his pictures of a country, unknowingly, on the cusp of upheaval: the assassinations, riots, and culture wars that defined the revolutionary year of 1968 were just months away. Here is a portrait of two Americas — one that has largely vanished, and another that remains, in spirit, indelible.
