U.S. Route 6 or U.S. Highway 6 (US 6), also called the Grand Army of the Republic Highway, honoring the American Civil Warveterans association, is a main route of the U.S. Highway system. While it currently runs east-northeast from US 395 in Bishop, California to Route 6A in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the route has been modified several times. The highway's longest-lasting routing, from 1936 to 1964, had its western terminus at Long Beach, California. During this time, US 6 was the longest highway in the country.
In 1964, the state of Californiarenumbered its highways, and most of the route within California was transferred to other highways. This dropped the highway's length below that of US 20, which is currently the longest U.S. Route.
US 6 is a diagonal route, whose number is out of sequence with the rest of the U.S. Highway grid in the western United States. When it was designated in 1926, US 6 only ran east of Erie, Pennsylvania. Subsequent extensions, largely replacing the former U.S. Route 32 (US 32) and U.S. Route 38 (US 38), have taken it south of US 30 near Chicago, Illinois, US 40 near Denver, Colorado (past the end of US 38), US 50 at Ely, Nevada, and even the former US 70 near Los Angeles, California, due to its north–south alignment in that state.
US 6 does not serve a major transcontinental corridor, unlike other highways ending in zero (0). George R. Stewart, author of U.S. 40: Cross Section of the United States of America, initially considered US 6, but realized that "Route 6 runs uncertainly from nowhere to nowhere, scarcely to be followed from one end to the other, except by some devoted eccentric". In the famous "beat" novel On the Road by Jack Kerouac, protagonist Sal Paradise actually considers hitchhiking on US 6 to Nevada, but is told by a driver that "there's no traffic passes through 6" and that he'd be better off going via Pittsburgh (the Pennsylvania Turnpike).
