One sunny April afternoon in Hamel while photographing old 66 north of downtown a curious gentleman came outside to inquire as to why I was taking snapshots in the middle of the road. Upon informing him I was just capturing pictures of the historic highway, he remarked how strange it was that there were two Route 66s, referring to the split just a mile or two north at Illinois 4 where the original two-lane road splits from the later four-lane. Standing along the same road that winds past the Old State Capital and under the shadow of the Sears Tower he thought it was the strangest…and funniest…thing that the signs sent you in two directions.
To those enamored with our nation's roads, highways are often like living things, with distinct personalities and stories to tell, and they certainly grow and change as if they were human. Route 66, the Mother Road, is no exception, and to trace her through the Land of Lincoln requires much more than a simple drive from Chicago to Saint Louis…or even Hamel to Springfield. Different alignments through different cities give the road a lot of ground to cover all along its diagonal journey through the Prairie State.
Original Alignment
Route 66 in Illinois originally followed State Bond Issue Route 4, starting from the Loop in downtown Chicago and following Jackson Street and Ogden Avenue south towards Joliet Road. From there it passed through the downtown of the industrial river city of Joliet before hitching its wagon to the old Chicago & Alton Railroad (now Union Pacific) for a southwest journey towards Missouri and states beyond. The highway zoomed through Pontiac and Bloomington-Normal, zigzagging through cozy neighborhoods in each, before heading on for Lincoln, the only town named after the 16th President with his consent, where again the route took several turns that took its travelers past myriad homes and businesses. Further to the south was Springfield, and the road entered the city to the east of the massive Illinois State Fairgrounds where residents across the state still flock to in the middle of each August. From there Route 66 traveled south through the capital, zigzagging through various downtown streets until following South Grand to what is now Chatham Road and exiting the city on the southwest side where today a multitude of chain stores surround White Oaks Mall in silent homage.
With the Illinois finish line - the Mississippi River - getting ever so close, the road took on its biggest collection of meanders, curving here and there to hit the towns of Chatham, Virden, Carlinville, Benld and Staunton. The road, once practically a straight diagonal shot to the north of Springfield, had no discernable pattern here, just as modern-day Illinois 4 does not, and is obviously the product of a desire to both follow property lines and also service as many towns as possible. After Staunton the highway’s sense of direction improves, heading due south before curving into Hamel to the southwest. From there it's a brief ride into Edwardsville, where the road turned several times before heading due west out of town towards the Missouri border. Only a couple of miles from the Show Me State the highway turned south to enter Granite City and East Saint Louis before arriving at downtown Saint Louis, Missouri and a bridge to take it into the lands to the west of the Mississippi.
Litchfield Alignment
The oddly wandering path between Springfield and Staunton was never meant to be permanent; if this new highway was to accommodate travelers by making their trip across the Prairie State a quick one, the Illinois Department of Transportation knew there would have to be a better, far more direct path, and from the very beginning intended to move Route 66 to the east and straighten out those curves into a fast moving modern highway.
Much of Central Illinois is a flat, shapeless land, aiding IDOT in its aim to straighten out the Mother Road by providing very few barricades to divert it. To the south of Springfield the new alignment of the road was able to follow exact north-south section lines for much of the way, providing an almost direct trip from the capital through Litchfield down to Mount Olive. From the latter village it was a simple jump southwest on SBI Route 16 to join the old road in Staunton, bypassing the curvy horrors of the Carlinville Alignment. First, though, the highway had to be moved in Springfield to match up with the new exit, and the city saw the first of a few repositionings of Route 66 in 1930 when the road began to exit the city on Sixth Street and follow SBI Route 126 to the south (with a brief five-year detour around the Lake Springfield construction.) The new, improved Litchfield Alignment was completed and signed as U.S. 66 in 1930, though it had appeared on road maps for several years prior. Travelers on the older alignment were greeted with only Illinois 4 signs as the state relegated the corridor back to just State Highway status and IDOT today also marks the route with Historic Route 66 [1926-1930] signage.
Plainfield Alignment
The Mother Road’s trip through the historic steel town of Joliet was changed in 1940 as part of the state’s drive to alleviate travel times on the highway. Route 66’s path through the Will County community was a fascinating one, winding past prisons and over a drawbridge into a quaint downtown where the nation’s first Dairy Queen restaurant was opened in 1940, but the scenic journey did little for travelers itching to get to their destination. As Illinois began an expansion of the highway throughout the state, avoiding many small towns by a mile or two to ease their crowded streets and aid the restless road warrior, Joliet got bypassed in a way that almost stretched the definition of the word.
The original route of 66 had followed Joliet Road south through Romeoville and then into Joliet. Starting in 1940 the road instead continued in its southwestern diagonal path past Joliet Road towards the town of Plainfield (on modern day I-55 and Illinois 126), an almost nine mile diversion to the west. From there it took a hard left on Division Street (now Illinois 59) and traveled due south (meeting modern day I-55 again in seven miles) before finally merging back with the original alignment further south at Gardner (about thirty miles south of its turn in downtown Plainfield.)
Even though the Plainfield Alignment was only built as a two-lane highway, it would still have been an easier path to traverse than the busy road through Joliet, and we can surmise that it most likely eased travel times for the cross-state traveler, especially if many still took the scenic original route. Ironically, though, the decision to make the newer alignment only two-lanes has cursed modern-day traffic on Illinois 59 with one of the slowest, most gridlocked stretches of concrete in the state of Illinois. While Route 66’s old zigzag through Joliet, now signed as Illinois 53, hardly moves at expressway speeds, it is certainly no slower than most other city alignments and not at all frustrating to the hurried driver. And it’s a cute, scenic drive through old neighborhoods and a revived downtown. Meanwhile, the population of Plainfield skyrocketed at the end of the twentieth century, rising from 4,500 in 1990 to 13,000 in 2000 and later up to 30,000 in 2005, and along with this influx of residents and subdivisions came a boom – far too fast – in commerce. Old two-lane 66 is lined with strip malls, big box retailers and chain restaurants that butt right up to the road’s edge, providing not only the ugliest stretch of the old Mother Road outside of Metro East St. Louis but also a frustrating mess of a traffic jam as each day more than 24,000 cars (equal to I-55 in some areas downstate) pound onto pavement poured to carry far fewer. Driving here without a world’s supply of patience is not recommended.
Though traveling the Plainfield Alignment today is almost utterly pointless, it does have one redeeming benefit: the historic union of two classic highways. The Mother Road meets the Lincoln Highway here, and the two share pavement briefly through cute downtown Plainfield before the latter road heads out west (the highways are actually signed in opposite directions here: as they head north together, the Lincoln Highway is westbound while the Mother Road is moving east into Chicago). As fun as this brief meeting of the motorways is, the roads also share a handshake in downtown Joliet, a much more attractive and classic area, so Route 66 travelers should really just forget about Plainfield and stick to the original highway alignment.
Bypasses
In 1946, Jack Rittenhouse published the first traveler’s guide to the Mother Road, entitled, simply enough, “A Guide Book to Highway 66.” He described the road’s contents in record detail, including many of the garages and tourist courts the motorist would encounter. Part of his town-by-town rundown of the Prairie State included an ominous preview of Route 66’s near future:
Leaving Plainfield you will find yourself on an Illinois "freeway" – one of a series of new super-highways being constructed under terms of an act passed in 1943. From Chicago to St. Louis, this road – when completed – will be a wide, improved highway which will allow speed and safety by skirting all smaller towns, and by restrictions against operating gas stations, cafes, courts, etc., directly on the highway. To reach such accommodations, you will have to turn off the highway a few hundred yards or less.
Though Rittenhouse misused the term freeway, describing instead what is technically an expressway (as a freeway restricts at-grade crossings and is limited access), his larger point stands: the urbanization of Route 66 had begun.
This beloved highway, built with tight curves and two narrow lanes, had become bloated with traffic, particularly as Americans hit the road as a cheap alternative in the belt-tightening days of the Great Depression. Route 66 served as a two-headed monster for many communities: in Odell the same highway that brought a large number of customers to the city’s locally owned businesses also cut off access to the school on the west side of town and required construction of a pedestrian tunnel under the road. Residents in towns just to the north of Springfield often told stories of excruciating waits to turn onto the road whenever the Illinois State Fair was open due to the massive amount of traffic heading into the capital city.
Additionally, the road was crumbling. It was a road built fast, quickly paved over old trails and country “roads” and the result was an over-taxed highway that needed massive rehabilitation in a time when transportation across the country was becoming crucial. Shutting down much of the current pavement – especially in many towns – was not practical. Something had to be done.
The Federal Government agreed, and even as World War II raged on urged construction of wider, safer highways, deeming such use of materials “necessary” for the wartime effort. In 1944 the Federal Aid Highway Act offered more funds for states to build four-lane “interstate” highways, though not nearly to the extent that the government would pursue twelve years later, and the funds led more to reconstruction of existing highways than breaking ground on new ones.
Illinois didn’t wait until the Federal program, beginning many of its realignment efforts a few years prior. Starting in 1940, IDOT would move many portions of the road out of the small towns, bypassing communities in the name of speed, allowing faster, easier transportation across the state but also costing the road some of its hometown charm.
Most of the four-lane Route 66 was built to the south of Chicago, as expanding the lanes through the growing neighborhoods and expanding suburbia of the Second City was more impractical - and there was very little you could do to get through Chicago any faster anyway. Bloomington-Normal and Springfield were both bypassed to the east, with Veterans Parkway in the former and Dirksen Parkway in the latter serving as new hosts for the U.S. Highway 66 as IDOT attempted to funnel cross-state and cross-country traffic around the busy cities. As the two communities continued to grow, the two would be bypassed yet again, Springfield even further to the east on present day Interstate 55 and the Twins to the west by the same highway.
Simple four-lane bypasses were built around most of the smaller communities, including Odell, Dwight, Pontiac, Atlanta, Lincoln, Litchfield and Mount Olive. At first most towns were bypassed with a simple wider two-lane highway around town, and then as the state coffers filled after the war and as additional Federal funding was provided an additional two lanes was added to create the full four-lane bypass. Most of these towns saw their two additional lanes built along side the original Route 66 in the countryside, then the new bypass lanes would curve off just before reaching the town, loop around its border and then rejoin the original, curving back into the two-lane road as it departed from town. In Dwight, the original two-lane path had barely touched the city's borders in the first place, eschewing downtown to save time and only briefly traveling through a northern neighborhood of the Livingston County community. The new bypass mirrored the original route's path, only with a wider arc to avoid any chance of city traffic.
The various Route 66 bypasses would serve as the official highway longer than their two-lane predecessor in many of the communities, with their twenty to thirty years of service matching or exceeding that of the original pavement. They would not last forever, though, and within two decades of the construction of the first highways to avoid the city work would begin on the ultimate bypass: the one that killed Route 66 completely. Read more about it in the last section: Interstate 55.
