About Jim Ross
Traveling, researching, photographing, and writing about the Mother Road has consumed more than three decades of my life. Since 1990, I have explored and probed Route 66 just about every which way you can, with a particular emphasis on its maze of pathways, many of which were deeply concealed in the shadows of history.
In 1992, I established Ghost Town Press and published my first guidebook, Oklahoma Route 66: The Cruiser’s Companion. About that time, I met road scholar Jerry McClanahan, already seasoned in charting lost alignments. We partnered up, and to meet the growing demand for guide materials, in 1994 we co-authored Here It Is! The Route 66 Map Series, which remains a worldwide bestseller. Since then, we both have published books and dozens of articles on the intricacies of the route. The odyssey of discovery and collaboration that we embarked upon all those years ago continues to this day.
The findings from my two-lane adventures often end up in print or find other mediums of expression. More recently, my focus has been almost entirely on preservation and mapping. Toward those ends, I authored a book on the route’s historic bridges and compiled a database to document them. The next six years were spent creating the Deep Tracks series of maps.
I like to think that along the way I have helped raise the preservation awareness level and that I have succeeded in helping sustain the highway’s historic integrity. If nothing else, my life has been greatly enriched, and for that reason alone I will continue as an advocate and sentry of the 2,400-mile linear museum we know as Route 66.
