The Route 66 home webpage has eight colorful navigation “buttons” that allow quick access to Route 66 matchcovers from each state. Below these buttons are four category buttons that allow quick access to only those Route 66 matchcover images of that particular category.
Matchcovers are listed by town from east to west in the state and then sorted alphabetically by business name within that town. Leading prepositions (“A” or “The”) are dropped from the business name.
When the website is accessed via a computer, the matchcover images are arranged twelve to a web page. Click a cover to enlarge the image and see in what other database categories that image appears. Click on the small arrows to move forward or backward among the twelve images of that webpage. Click on the large arrow for an automatic slide show. A few matchcovers, usually matchcovers that have a US Highway 66 designation or address printed on the inside, have the inside matchcover surface scanned as well. Just hover the cursor over the outside image to see any inside image.
Each matchcover is assigned a unique number in the format X-#### or X-####.# The first digit X is the state number (1 for Illinois, 2 for Missouri, etc.) and the four-digit number specifies that matchcover image from that state in the database. Some matchcovers that are in a set or otherwise have very similar artwork may have a decimal point followed by a number for different covers in that group or series. The second line is for the business name and the third and last line is for the town name and state abbreviation.
MATCHCOVER SEARCH BY CATEGORY
Simply clicking through the Route 66 matchcover image collection is only part of the fun. When every Route 66 matchcover image was uploaded into the database it was also tagged with parameters that admitted it as a member of multiple different categories. So the visitor can search through the Route 66 collection by category too.
To do so the visitor returns to the Home page and uses the upper search function titled “Matchcover Search.”
The white box on the right below the title “Matchcover Search” allows the visitor to search by category, topic or description. The white box has the word “Bar/Cocktail Lounge” as a default plus a down arrow. Click on the down arrow and scroll down to see all the parameters that can be searched upon. There are nearly 80 categories listed. The choices are grouped and include the business types (e.g., “Lodging” or “Restaurant”), or categories of the matchcover (e.g., “Full Length” or “Girlie”) or interesting old manufacturers (e.g., “Old Manumarks”). (A “manumark” is a fancy way of saying the name of the company that manufactured the matchbook.) Clicking on any category and then clicking “Search” brings up those matchcovers in the database that are included in that category. Also note that many categories are indented sub-categories so that you can search within a major category and then perhaps later search within a more specific sub-category. For example, searching for “Lodging” brings up over 3500 matchcover images but drilling down to focus on just one type of lodging, say “Cabins,” displays only about 120 matchcover images. The best way to appreciate the power of sorting this database into multiple virtual collection categories is to explore it on your own.
Most contemporary databases allow for visitors to look for elements in more than one classification or category. This is the case with most of the sophisticated shopping websites. But this database was built upon the Word Press platform and it has limitations. For the most part it only allows searches by one category. What if you want to search for Motels that have Girlie illustrations on the rear cover? Unfortunately you can not do that. But there is one limited, but sometimes useful, search situation that this Word Press database usually allows visitors to perform. A visitor has some capability tosearch by category within one particular state. So a visitor has the opportunity to search for, say, Cafes in the state of Texas, for example. Here’s one way that it could be done:
From the Home webpage click on the state navigation button in which you are interested. Let’s say the state is Texas. The visitor sees twelve matchcovers from Shamrock, TX, the eastern-most town on Route 66 in Texas. Now the visitor can look to the far right to view a list of sixteen Alternate Categories. If the visitor clicks on Café only those matchcover images from the state of Texas that represent cafes are presented. (Often the name “Café” is in the business title but sometimes it is not. In the latter case, the word “café” usually appears somewhere else on the matchcover image. But on rare occasions the word “café” does not even appear on the matchcover at all and some other source like a postcard or other matchcover validates that the business was a “café”.)
But what if the category desired (for example “Girlie”) does not appear in the Alternative Categories list? This will not work for right now. We will be trying to address the limitations of this search process later in 2024 but for right now we have limited flexibility. Also see the example about ten paragraphs below for another approach for incompletely accessing Cafes in the state of Texas.
KEYWORD SEARCH
The second helpful tool is the “Keyword Search.” Type your keyword (typically a business or town name) or keywords (multiple keywords must all be present in the matchcover image title) into the lower white rectangle on the right side and press Enter on your keyboard. What will be displayed will be any and all matchcover images that have those keyword(s) in their title. (The title includes the image number, the business name, and the town and state abbreviation for the matchcover image.)
Now for one important considerations and several hints:
It’s most important to know that the “Keyword Search” function is not like Google: close is not good enough. The keywords in the search box must exactly match the title names in the database.
And some hints:
The same business may have had different names at different times. If you want to make sure you don’t miss any matchcovers in which you may be interested, try to use as few Keywords as necessary. For example, if you type in Elite Courts looking for matchcovers from the Elite Courts in Amarillo, that’s what you will get. But matchcovers from the Elite Motel will be missing. So instead use a single somewhat-rare Keyword like Elite to see them all.
If you want to see the matchcover images from the Café U Drop Inn in Shamrock, TX, you could type all of these words into the Keyword Search but you’ll miss one matchcover that does not have “Café” in the title. So instead use fewer Keywords such as U Drop to see them all. (Also search for Nunn’s or you will miss out there too!)
If you want to see all of the matchcovers from, say, Shamrock, Texas, you could type Shamrock TX into the keyword search. That works, but you will also get the Shamrock Lounge in Amarillo but you could just ignore that.
Let’s say you want to see the matchcovers from the Lincoln Courts in Chandler, Oklahoma. There are matchcovers that say Lincoln Court (singular), Lincoln Courts (plural) and Lincoln Motel. You could type in Lincoln in the Keyword Search box but then you’d also see all the matchcovers from Lincoln, IL, plus the A. Lincoln Motel in Springfield and anything else that has Lincoln in the title. The best way to see what you want is to type in both Lincoln and Chandler into the Keyword Search box.
If you type McLean into the Keyword Search you will get all matchcover images from both McLean, TX, and McLean, IL. If you want, say, just McLean, IL, type in McLean IL into the Keyword Search box and then you will get all of McLean, IL (plus a few others from McLean, TX, that have the letter sequence I-L in their title name, so you’ll ignore them).
Unfortunately distinguishing between Springfield Missouri and Illinois is a bit more difficult. If you type in Springfield MO into the Keyword Search you will get all the matchcover images from Springfield, MO, of course, but you will also get all of the MOtels from Springfield, IL(see why?). You can ignore the images that you don’t want.
Some businesses used hyphens in their names sometimes and sometimes not. I occasionally dropped hyphens myself to make things easier (or confusing depending upon how you look at it). But if you suspect a businesses name is or could be hyphenated (Bar-B-Q/Bar-B-Cue/Bar-B-Que is common), type in the Keywords with and without the hyphens until you find what works.
If you are looking for, say, the Hotel Connor in Joplin, you will find matchcovers listed alphabetically by H (Hotel Connor) or C (Connor Hotel) depending upon what is printed on the matchcover. That’s not a big problem because the website visitor will see everything by just putting Hotel and Connor in the Keyword Search function.
Another way to find, for example, Café businesses in the state of Texas is to type Café TX into the Keyword Search box. That will yield all of the businesses with the name Café in their title. That may be want you want but it will leave out all of the businesses in the state of Texas that have café establishments but the word Café is not part of the business title. This is often the case where the business is a complex, like a motel and café, or a gas station and a café, and the business title mentions the motel or gas station but not the café. (There is a strict number of letters limit for the title field so the full title of many businesses has to be abbreviated or truncated.)
The Keyword Search has some limitations but I find that I can usually find the matchcover images that I want fairly quickly.
The best way to get comfortable using this website is to simply try things. You can’t break the website.
A FEW MORE TIPS ON NAVIGATING THE SITE
The display of a few of the sub-categories has been tailored to make the experience more enjoyable. To that end the matchcover images in a few sub-categories (Americana, Girlies, Hillbillies, Patriotic and Safety Series) are rotated 180° (but only if you specifically search on any of these five categories) since the interesting image is usually on the rear cover.
Also if you search directly for Full Lengths in the Matchcover Search drop down menu, they will be displayed in the more-pleasing horizontal format. But if you search for another category that happens to include a full length matchcover, that full length matchcover will appear as a vertical image so it fits into the display matrix of that category.
EXPANDING INTO THE FUTURE
This is absolutely not a fixed database: it is continuously growing. New matchcovers are being discovered and uploaded every month. If you have any matchcovers that meet our inclusion criteria that not displayed use the “Contact Phil” tab on the Home webpage and I will tell you how to contribute your images to this Route 66 database.
Thank you,
Phil Gordon