Historic Route 66 in Illinois: Legacy

Brandtville Cafe with man in phone booth, Bloomington, Illinois, July 28, 1955. Kenneth H. Berglund, photographer. July 28, 1955. Illinois State University.

While Route 66 was booming with roadside traffic and tourism in the mid-1950’s, the planning to make it obsolete was already in legislation. The improvements that had been made in the 1940’s to create a strategic highway network of small roads were left in the dust with President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vision for the Interstate Highway System. Inspired by the Reichschautobahn system, Eisenhower saw a fast and safe highway as critical for economic growth defense.

In 1957, parts of Route 66 were already being chosen for sections of I-55, I-74, or I-190. Route 66 was travelled less and less, left in increasingly worse disrepair: first from over-use,  and then from neglect. The "Mother Road" (as it was called in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath) was officially removed from the U.S. Highway System on June 27, 1985.

Highway 1. Stan Windhorn, photographer.  May 30, 1944. McLean County Museum of History.

Community efforts have since surged to preserve the highway’s particularity and celebrate its off-beat culture that lined rural America for three decades. Cities in Illinois began to register stretches of the route under the Register of Historic Places, citing both the engineering and cultural significance that preceded the interstate and knitted together rural communities alongside the road. Today, approximately 300 miles  of Historic Route 66 in Illinois can be traveled, with many roadside attractions and historic sites to visit.

Want to drive Historic Route 66 in Illinois?

Check out this Road Trip Itinerary from Enjoy Illinois or this Interactive Map from the McLean County Museum of History.