The pace: 6,000 words a day for 20 days. The fuel: coffee, although rumors flew that the stimulant Benzedrine was also partially responsible. The result: a 120-foot-long scroll that would eventually change the literary landscape.

"Went fast because the road is fast," Jack Kerouac wrote in a letter to Neal Cassady, describing the marathon session that produced On the Road. "Rolled it out on the floor and it looks like a road."

And now that paper path is wending its way to the hometown of its unconventional hero. The Denver Public Library will display 60 feet of the yellowed, original "On the Road" manuscript from Jan. 6 to March 31. To give visitors a glimpse of the scroll in its entirety, the library will put the 60 feet on display until Feb. 22. The second 60 feet will get its day in the spotlight starting Feb. 25.

The document, which was purchased by Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay in a 2001 auction for $2.4 million, has been touring the country since 2004.

"For me, it's about people who love it getting to see it and enjoying it," said Irsay, who stores the scroll in a vault at the Lilly Library at Indiana University when it's not touring.

The scroll, which is typically displayed for free at public libraries, has visited eight cities, including Rome. It was the most well-attended attraction in the San Francisco Public Library's history.

"There are a lot of people who take a Holy Grail approach to seeing it," said Jim Canary, the scroll's conservator. "In Vegas, we saw people who got into an old car and drove from Los Angeles."

Canary says he's seen fans spend hours at the exhibition reading the entire scroll. Some bring copies of the book with them and jot down notes in the margins about the differences between the original and published versions.

Composer David Amram, who was good friends with Kerouac, says it's easy to see why the scroll holds such fascination.

"When you see the scroll, you can imagine you're in the room with Jack Kerouac all those years ago, when he sat down and wrote this whole thing in three weeks," said Amram, who composed music for the film "Pull My Daisy," which was based on Kerouac's play, "The Beat Generation."

"It inspires people to be adventurous and creative and, most of all, compassionate and respectful of others. Those are all wonderful things in these difficult times."

"I think one of the great things about the tour is that it will take Kerouac out of the beat generation forever," said Amram. "He was so much more than that, and his work deserves to be judged on its own merit."

Friend Ed White, who's immortalized in "On the Road" as Tim Gray, viewed Kerouac as a sort of a master documentarian.

"He wrote about everything," said White, a retired Denver architect, who met Kerouac at Columbia University. "He'd write about things that other people wouldn't notice or see."

The scroll gives fans a chance to learn more about Kerouac's process. Written as if one continuous thought, the manuscript is paragraph-free. The real names of the people who inspired the characters in the book -- Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg -- remain. None of the places or events has been disguised.

Yet myths about the document persist. Some experts on the script contend that the idea to write on one long sheet of paper was inspired by experimentation, while others contend that Kerouac took that route because of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, according to information gathered by Christie's for the auction. White believes it was simply more practical for Kerouac, who reportedly typed 100 words a minute.

"I thought it was a good way to keep things continuous," said White, who's working on publishing a book detailing the letters he and Kerouac exchanged throughout their friendship. "Otherwise, you'd be faced with a roomful of paper."

Another mystery revolves around the script's missing ending. Legend has it that a dog belonging to one of Kerouac's friends ate the scroll's final portion. Canary confirms that Kerouac included a handwritten note in pencil on the scroll referring to the incident: "Dog Ate (Potchky -- a dog)."

Naysayers, however, suggest that Kerouac scrapped the original ending.

"It's pretty ragged at the end," Canary said. "But I guess we'll never know."