It wasn’t always called Route 66. Before the highway got its now-famous name, the road that slices through the Texas Panhandle was christened “60.” Oklahoma civic leader Cyrus Avery reclassified it under the title that “remains lodged in the American psyche to this day,” as Paul Underwood writes in “Ride of the Century,” his cover story for the January/February issue. Often considered the father of the Mother Road, Avery looked upon 60 and gave it its new, lasting name in 1926: Route 66. In “The River of the Innocents,” Texas Highways senior writer Ian Dille ventures off a slightly less famous highway to spend time with two mythologized river characters who are often found at Sewell Park in San Marcos. And in the rest of the issue, writer Scott DuBois recommends places to stay in West Texas, and Austin-based writer Jenny Tinghui Zhang reckons with time’s passage along her favorite hiking trail around Town Lake—or Lady Bird Lake, depending on who you ask.