If there’s a road trip more internationally famous than Route 66, I don’t know what it is. What better symbolizes the freedom of the open road than Route 66, which stretches 2,448 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica and passes through eight states and three time zones along the way? Of course, not all of us have the two weeks minimum to do the journey justice. That’s why this article focuses on Route 66 in Illinois, which follows on the heels of my earlier blog, Route 66 in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, which took several trips to complete. Whether your relationship with Route 66 is short or runs deep, any experience is likely to be strikingly personal.
Route 66 is so ingrained in our psyche, we call it the “Mother Road,” coined by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath. The epitome of America’s Main Street, it embraces us in a landscape ranging from the corn fields and plains of the Midwest straight through the desert Southwest to the Pacific Ocean. As much as 85% of Route 66 is drivable, though the old highway itself has mostly been gobbled up by state and interstate highway systems or updated beyond recognition. Still, a good part of the old Route 66 remains, including stretches of original cement that ferries you straight into the past.
What I love most is the nostalgia Route 66 inspires, the way it takes me back to memories of childhood and leads me to unassuming small towns I’d otherwise miss. Exploring classic diners, vintage gas stations, numerous Route 66 museums, and roadside attractions is like a scavenger hunt for adults, a joy ride into our shared American past. Mostly, it’s just plain fun. And to think we almost killed it.
A short history of Route 66
Route 66 officially opened in 1926 as one of our first numbered U.S. highways, making it 100 years old in 2026. The optimal way to drive from Chicago to Los Angeles, it gained special prominence in 1939 with the publication of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” followed by a movie of the same name in 1940, which memorialized victims of the Dust Bowl and Depression as they drove west to California in search of a better life.
By the ‘50s and ‘60s, families were loading station wagons for road-trip vacations, where they encountered plenty of billboards, outsized advertisements, and plenty of kitsch hoping to grab their attention for a meal, amusement, or a place to stay. Service stations could hardly keep up with the gas, flat tires, and maintenance travelers required.
“Get Your Kicks on Route 66.” There are more than 200 renditions of this famous song, composed in 1946 by Bobby Troup and performed, among others, by Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Chuck Berry, and the Rolling Stones. And of course, what child of the ‘60s didn’t watch Route 66, which followed the antics of two attractive guys driving around the country in a Corvette convertible? We all wanted to be them.
But Route 66 was never a static highway. It was always changing, eliminating sharp turns and railroad crossings as cars drove faster, bypassing towns that grew too large and congested. Every new alignment brought pain to towns suddenly cut off from motorists but offered new opportunities to businesses on the updated road.
It was the birth of the interstate highway system that ushered in Route 66’s gradual demise. In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which authorized the construction of 41,000 miles of interstate highways. Eventually, five new Interstate Highways (I-55, I-44, I-40, I-15, and I-10) replaced Route 66. In 1985, Route 66 was officially decommissioned, and the last Route 66 highway signs were taken down. Travel along the old route declined dramatically, but people who remembered its heydays found its pull irresistible.
Today, people from all over the world have driven the Mother Road, evidenced by Route 66 brochures issued in Japanese and German. As one traveler from the UK told me, “Route 66 represents a time when everyone around the world was in love with America.” Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California are all gearing up with centennial celebrations, welcoming, perhaps, a new generation of motorists drawn to the freedom of the open road.
Route 66 in Illinois
Today there are 400 miles of Route 66 in Illinois, but that’s because it jumped around so much. It basically mirrors today’s I-55 in its diagonal run southwest through Illinois.
In 1926, Illinois already had a well-traveled, two-lane concrete-slab highway connecting Chicago and St. Louis, so renaming it Route 66 was a no-brainer. Over the years, however, the highway moved to accommodate three major alignments. From 1926 to 1930, it traveled through the heart of communities, the speed limit was 25mph, and, during Prohibition (1920-1933), gangs found it perfect for hauling illegal alcohol from stills in Illinois to speakeasies in Chicago and St. Louis.
By 1930, Route 66 bore the heaviest traffic in the state, prompting a new alignment that bypassed congested towns and accommodated cars that could now drive 60mph or faster. The last alignment occurred from 1940 to 1977, when Route 66 expanded into one of the earliest four-lane highways to accommodate military and defense transports during World War II. Eventually, Route 66 in Illinois was replaced by adjacent Interstate 55, with all signs for Route 66 removed by 1977.
In 2005, however, the old road received a shot in the arm when the US Department of Transportation designated it the Illinois Route 66 National Scenic Byway. Most of Route 66 in Illinois is traversable, passing through 90 communities on more than 400 miles that take in the state’s three historic alignments (brown signs alert travelers as to which alignment they are following: 1926-1930, 1930-1940, or 1940-1977). Although true Route 66 fans may want to weave through all of them, most people don’t have the time.
Route 66 in Illinois travels through a more populated region of the country than it does out west, so you’re going to be jumping out of your car more often. Take joy in the corny, the quirky, and the kitschy–including giant statues created to stop traffic in its steps, repurposed gas stations, and classic diners–but it’s also a trip through rural Illinois with its grain elevators, fields of corn, soybeans and wheat, farmhouses, historic town squares, and abandoned buildings of past eras.
Along Route 66 in Illinois are Wayside Exhibits and nine-foot-tall Experience Hubs (like the one here in Pontiac), outdoor signboards meant to enhance your experience and relate the history of a place. Please note that my recommended stops below are just the highlights. For more detailed information, see illinoisroute66.org.
The northern part of Route 66 in Illinois
Route 66 in Illinois begins in downtown Chicago, where you’ll find signs announcing the start of the journey, including one on East Adams Street where you can fortify for your trip at nearby Lou Mitchell’s, which has been serving up hearty meals for almost a century. I’m partial also to The Berghoff, a family-owned and -operated business for more than 125 years and famous for its Wiener Schnitzel, Sauerbraten and other German fare.
Having already spent some time in Chicago, I couldn’t get out of the city’s traffic fast enough, but there’s virtually no city break between the metropolis and my first stop, Joliet. Snap a photo of the attractive Rialto Square Theatre, which opened the same year as Route 66 as a vaudeville venue and now stages musicals, plays, concerts, and movie series. It’s said that the Rialto was one of Al Capone’s favorite hangouts, but he now hangs out in Mount Carmel Cemetery near Berwyn. It’s also rumored that Capone was a driving force in getting Route 66 paved so that he could more easily distribute his illegal alcohol.
Other “criminals” that hung out in Joliet were Jake and Elwood from “The Blues Brothers,” which was partly filmed in Joliet at the Old Joliet Prison. The best place to see Jake and Elwood now are the replicas dancing on top of the Rich & Creamy on Broadway. This ice cream shop is reminiscent of the many that used to line Route 66 back in the day, though this one has been here a mere 50 yearts.
Across the street is Dick’s on 66, a tourist attraction that just cries out as a photo op for your gang. These two sisters were celebrating a 66th birthday by driving the whole 2,448 miles of Route 66. As often happens, I ran into them several times along Route 66 in Illinois.
In Wilmington you’ll encounter your first gentle giant, one of many that once proudly stood along Route 66 and elsewhere to lure in customers. They’re known as the Muffler Men, 20-foot tall fiberglass figures that were made in the 1960s by International Fiberglass in California after it acquired a mold for a Paul Bunyan. The first figure was designed to hold an axe, for the Paul Bunyan Cafe on Route 66 in Flagstaff AZ around 1962. But the outsized statues could be made to hold not only mufflers and axes but also pretty much anything. Wilmington’s Gemini Giant stands in tribute to the nation’s 1961 Gemini Space Flight program and looks pretty spiffy in his green suit and silver helmet, rocket in hand. For most of his life he stood outside a café called the Launching Pad (where this photo was taken), but when that business shuttered he was moved to Wilmington’s South Island Park in late 2024.
Hungry? Might be time for a break at Polka-Dot Drive-In. It started life in 1956 as a painted school bus for taking food orders but moved to its fixed location in Braidwood in 1962. Its arresting outdoor features include fiberglass statues of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Betty Boop, James Dean and other heartthrobs. But the fun is inside with its booth seating, hot dogs, burgers and other fare, and Wurlitzer jukebox playing 45s (All I Have to Do is Dream, Sealed with a Kiss). It’s also a good bathroom break: the women’s is plastered with photos of Elvis, the men’s is devoted to Marilyn. By the way, is there anything that screams farmland more than a tractor parked outside?
Next up is Dwight, where you’ll want to pull into the Ambler-Becker Texaco Station. Its claim to fame is that it dispensed fuel from 1933 to 1999, leading to claims that it’s the longest-operating service station on Route 66. Now on the National Register of Historic Place, it now serves as a kind of museum and visitor center.
Down the road in Odell is another example of a well-preserved former service station, also on the National Register of Historic Places. The Standard Oil Gasoline Station was built in 1932 but had so much business it added bays in 1940 to accommodate all the cars. That proved fortuitous, because although Odell in its heyday boasted as many as 10 gas stations along Route 66, a 1946 bypass caused stations pumping gas to close, but there were always broken-down cars. The station was able to sell gas until 1967 and served travelers until 1975.
Pontiac is the best stop for stretching those legs, especially at the Route 66 Association Hall of Fame and Museum, one of many Route 66 museums dedicated to and located on the Mother Road. Housed in an historic fire station, it’s packed with memorabilia, photographs, and information about many of the sights you’ll see along Route 66 in Illinois, including those gas stations in Dwight and Odell and places that are now long gone. Because I traveled in a 1970s VW camping bus while in college, I was especially smitten by the 1972 VW bus on display that belonged to Bob Waldmire (1945-2009), a legendary Route 66 artist and traveler who was one of the best-known characters on the Mother Road. It’s said that his bus was the inspiration for the character Filmore in the 2006 animated motion picture “Cars,” which introduced Route 66 to a new generation.
It’s also fun to take a tour of 24 outdoor murals in and around Pontiac’s historic downtown, many of them old-time advertisements, tributes (including one to Waldmire), or references to Route 66. If you’re hungry, amble over to the Old Log Cabin, which opened in 1926 and offers breakfast, sandwiches and American comfort food. But to me, the most interesting thing about this place is what I learned from signboards out front. In the 1940s, when Route 66 was moved to the opposite side of the restaurant and widened to four lanes, owners of the cabin showed ingenuity by jacking it up and turning it 180 degrees with horses so that it would face the new road. Apparently, hundreds of locals came to watch.
The central part of Route 66
Be sure to take the detour to Lexington for its Memory Lane, a one-mile strip of original Route 66 pavement complete with vintage billboards and advertisements.
My only souvenir from my trip along Route 66 in Illinois was purchased at Funks Grove, a funky town settled by two Funk brothers and a couple of relatives in 1824. Nowadays mostly deserted, it has a cemetery, some historic homes, and a 1,000-acre prairie grove, the last remaining intact prairie grove in the state. Almost everyone who still lives there, it seems, is named Funk.
But most people come for Funks Grove Pure Maple Sirup, made by the Funk family for more than 185 years through six generations. Everything is done on site, from tapping the maple trees for sap to boiling it down and bottling it. From about 600 taps, the family produces around 2,000 gallons of sirup every year. You might notice that the Funks spell their syrup with an “i.” That’s because “sirup” was the preferred spelling in the 1920s in Webster’s Dictionary, which meant it was pure without extra sugar, additives or preservatives. You can purchase it only online or at the store (seasonally March through August while supplies last).
McLean boasts what is arguably the first truck stop on Route 66, though the Dixie Truck Stop claims it’s actually the oldest truck stop in the country. It opened in 1928 in a mechanic’s garage with just a counter and barstools for its sandwiches. Today it still pulls in the truckers, and its restaurant offers an extensive menu along with a buffet piled high with chicken, meatloaf, fried fish, lasagna, salad, and other entrees. Open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
But I was also excited to see young blood in downtown McLean, in the form of pinball machines in two Arcadia arcades. There’s no entry fee and games operate on quarters (half cost just 25 cents). Together they celebrate restored pinball machines from the 1960s through 2000s; included are surely at least a few from your childhood. It’s a good stop for families, but for those who can’t get enough, the business also offers rooms, suites, and a three-bedroom loft, complete, naturally, with pinball and arcade games.
Next stop is Atlanta, where you’ll encounter another Muffler Man, this one a giant Paul Bunyon holding a hotdog. He used to stand in front of a restaurant but refused to give up that hotdog when moved here; I can hardly blame him.
Down the road is Lincoln, named after Abraham Lincoln in 1853 and the only town honoring his name while the man was still alive. While there are several places in town that pay tribute to the president (including the Lincoln Heritage Museum), none is more conspicuous than the “World’s Largest Covered Wagon” according to Guinness World Records, erected in 2007. More attractive in my opinion (maybe because it’s old kitsch) is The Mill Museum on 66. Opened in 1929 as a sandwich shop, it grew to include a barroom and dance hall, famous for its Schnitzels. Today it serves as a museum of Route 66 artifacts and memorabilia.
Springfield
There’s so much to see in Springfield, the largest town along Route 66 in Illinois, that you might want to spend the night. Illinois is the only state on Route 66 with a direct connection to Abraham Lincoln, which meant it always attracted vacationers driving the Mother Road. The top thing to see is the Lincoln Home, now a National Historic Site that includes 4.5 square blocks of historic homes and leafy trees that impart a residential atmosphere even today. Following Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, his funeral procession passed by this Springfield home, drawing thousands of mourners. In 1887 Lincoln’s only surviving son (they had four) donated the home to the people of Illinois, who preserved it as a memorial until 1972, when Illinois donated it to the United States.
You should also visit the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum to learn more about the man who probably shaped the future of our nation more than any other president, as well as the Lincoln Tomb State Historic Site, completed in 1874 as the final resting place of Lincoln, his wife Mary Todd, and three of their four sons.
Because I’m a huge Frank Lloyd Wright fan, I also visited Springfield’s Dana-Thomas House, designed by Wright in 1902 and a a good example of his early Prairie style. Its 35 rooms and more than 12,000 square feet remain essentially unchanged and contain 250 art glass light fixtures and lamps and more than 100 pieces of original Wright-designed oak furniture. Wright (1867-1959) was a legend in his own time, so it’s not hard to imagine motorists on Route 66 stopping to take a look at this creation. [For more on Frank Lloyd Wright, see my blogs Wisconsin’s Frank Lloyd Wright Trail and Frank Lloyd Wright in Japan.]
Other sights tied to Route 66 include the Route History Museum, which shares the stories of Blacks traveling Route 66 in Illinois and Black history in Springfield. Through exhibits and virtual reality experiences, visitors learn about Black-owned businesses, the Negro Motorist Green Book used by Black travelers from 1936 to 1964, the Great Migration of Blacks from the South, and all-white “sundown towns” that were dangerous for Blacks after sunset.
The Ace Sign Co. Sign Museum preserves more than 85 historic signs from Springfield and Route 66, while over at the Illinois State Fairgrounds Route 66 Experience a self-guided tour highlights businesses along Route 66 in Illinois and displays vintage billboards and neon signs. Springfield’s own Muffler Man, the Lauterbach Giant, holds a U.S. flag at 1569 Wabash Ave.
For a meal with history attached, Maldaner’s was established in 1884 and remains one of Springfield’s finest restaurants. On the other end of the pay scale is Cozy Dog Drive In (left), famous for its “corn dog on a stick” first served in 1946 and now under the third generation of the Waldmire family. Route 66 Motorheads Bar & Grill, Museum & Entertainment Complex is filled with vintage memorabilia and artifacts, including cars, motorcycles, antique gas pumps, and neon signs.
The southern part of Route 66
South of Springfield, take old Route 4, where on Snell and Curran roads between the two towns of Chatham and Auburn you’ll find one of the state’s most photographed historic roads. It’s only 1.4-miles long, but the hand-laid brick road was completed in 1931 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Carlinville is noted for its historic downtown and square, listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its many buildings dating back to the 1880s. Route 66 once circled Carlinville Square, bringing many visitors until it was rerouted in 1930 and bypassed the town.
There are lots of antique stores along Route 66, but Mother Road Antique Mall on the north side of Carlinville Square caught my attention for its antiques and collectibles, including Burma Shave signs with their witty sayings (“Car in the ditch, man in the tree, moon was full and so was he”).
But most interesting to me is Carlinville’s largest single collection of Sears mail order homes in the country. Built around 1918 for mine workers of the Standard Oil Company, the 150-plus homes are centered mostly on Rice and Charles streets, which were built extra wide to accommodate the delivery of prefab houses. The mostly two-story houses look pretty ordinary (some are rundown); I never would have guessed they were prefab.
In Litchfield is yet another information center, the Litchfield Museum and Route 66 Welcome Center, filled with local lore and Route 66 artifacts, including maps and drawings by Bob Waldmire and an original Route 66 sign. Although the building looks vintage, it was constructed from the ground up and opened in 2013 on the former site of the Vic Suhling gas station, where only its sign stands preserved.
Cater-corner across Route 66 is the Ariston Cafe, which like others on the Mother Road, claims to be the oldest continuously operated restaurant on Route 66. In any case, its history goes back to 1924, when it opened in Carlinville on Route 4, the predecessor of Route 66. When Route 66 was rerouted in 1929, the restaurant relocated to Litchfield. It serves steaks, fried chicken, sandwiches and Italian fare.
Moving south brings you to Staunton, where all three alignments of Route 66 went through town, memorialized in a downtown mural called “Where the Three Roads Come Together.” But the main reason motorists come here is for Henry’s Rabbit Ranch, a throwback to roadside attractions of yore with its collection of rabbits–both the animal kind and the VW version. The live rabbits hop around, while their predecessors are memorialized outside with headstones. The story goes that owner Rich Henry inherited some rabbits from his daughter, who quickly learned that her furry pets zealously did what rabbits do, outgrowing her small apartment. Historic vehicles litter the property, and you’ll usually find Henry inside his old filling station that serves as a visitor center and depository of Route 66 souvenirs. He says his most common question from passersby is “Where’s 66 at?” To which he likes to reply, “How did you get here?” Route 66, you see, runs right beside his property.
Back on Route 66 and heading south, you might wish to make a detour to Collinsville for a photo op of a water tower. That’s right. The 170-foot-tall Brooks Catsup Bottle Water Tower was built in 1949 to supply water to a catsup plant and today garners its own recognition on the National Register of Historic Places.
Racing toward the finish of Route 66 in Illinois will bring you to Madison, where you’ll find the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, which served as Route 66’s Mississippi river crossing into Missouri from 1937 to 1960. Before that it was a private toll bridge, with a much noticed bend in it to accommodate solid footings, but it’s a straight shot now. Motorists were once greeted by 400 elm trees lining the Illinois approach to the bridge, while on the Missouri side was an amusement park. Today it’s a 5,353-foot pedestrian bridge, one of the longest in the world.
If you’re continuing your journey on Route 66, see my blog Route 66 through Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma.
