You’re standing in the middle of an empty highway, looking into Arizona’s high-desert light, and Depeche Mode plays in the mind—at least, that was the mental setup for photographer David J. Schwartz as he built the image set for the U.S. Postal Service’s Route 66 centennial stamp project, according to the announcement and accompanying reporting. USPS plans to release the stamps Tuesday, marking Route 66’s centennial with designs tied to scenes along the “Mother Road.”
USPS’s package includes eight stamps, with one design meant to represent each state Route 66 traverses. The designs draw on Schwartz’s decades-long effort to photograph Route 66, which he described as culminating in 42 trips along the highway. The result, in USPS’s telling, is a set that pairs landscapes and roadside relics—such as vintage diner and motel settings—with a goal of capturing what the route looks like from the road.
Schwartz’s involvement traces to his long-running interest in making a visual record of the route. Reporting on the project says Schwartz planned a road trip as a teenager in 1988 after learning of Route 66 through music, and he later took his first taste of the highway in 2004. By the time USPS selected him for the stamp work in 2023, he had made 42 trips and had also returned to formal training in photography after earlier work in retail management.
USPS art director Greg Breeding said he found Schwartz’s photographs while working on a map graphic and chose them for their look. In the interviews and description tied to the stamp launch, Breeding said the images feel like the viewer is there, and that they were therefore especially useful for stamps. Breeding and USPS also said the stamp images steer away from the route’s most popular sites, partly because permissions can be harder to obtain and partly because they wanted a “fresh look,” with the stamp designs deliberately devoid of people to avoid a “tourist trap” feeling.
The physical stamp production for the series uses a plate that contains 16 stamps—two of each of the eight designs—according to the project description. A ninth photo functions as selvage, meaning it forms the surrounding image around the stamp block. One of the selected photos, described as showing an empty Arizona highway shot near Seligman in 2023, became the selvage image after Schwartz and a high school friend finally took the trip they had planned for years.
USPS and Breeding highlighted how the designers tried to translate the road’s experience into framed stamp scenes. In explaining the choice of approach, Schwartz said interstates do not follow the land’s contour and would “probably” be dangerous to stand on for the view, while Route 66 lets a traveler feel part of the landscape moving through it. Breeding added that the stamp blocks aim to show the route as colorful and quirky, and he framed Route 66 as living history stretching from the past to the present.
Examples included in the stamp descriptions ranged from the Conoco Tower Station and U-Drop Inn in Shamrock, Texas—an Art Deco structure with neon lighting—to a dilapidated “Motel” sign photographed in Yucca, Arizona. The stamp material also pointed to Schwartz’s favorite Illinois entry: a friend’s 1929 Model A Ford traveling down a surviving stretch of Route 66 composed of hand-laid brick near Auburn just south of Springfield, with that image intended to make viewers feel as if they were present at Route 66’s start.
In remarks tied to the stamp release, Schwartz said he was amazed that photos tied to his trips would “travel all over the United States and end up in people’s mailboxes.” He added that he hopes the stamps will inspire people to get out and travel Route 66 and to support the “Mom and Pop businesses” that, in his view, help keep the route alive for another 100 years.